


Between Sleep & Awake

by SylphofScript



Series: The Second Spark (to the Right) [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Magic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Slow Burn, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski is Missing, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-11-01 17:12:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10926333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylphofScript/pseuds/SylphofScript
Summary: Stiles is gone, and he's left behind a world of worry and panic for his friends--for his family. For the second time, Stiles Stilinski is gone because of Derek, and he'll be damned if he's not brought back in one piece.Unfortunately for Derek, life's just not that forgiving.Ratings and tags subject to (and will) change.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hoo boy, I think you're in for a long haul. There's a lot going on in this one, and it's not quite as linear as is predecessor. It's LINEAR, but we won't be going day-by-day like we did previously.
> 
> Shit gets effed up. Shit meaning Stiles. Sorry, buddy. It'll get better. Eventually.

Stiles Stilinksi has officially been missing for three weeks.

Derek hasn’t been back to his new studio in over a month now, and the idea of going back never occurs to him. Not while he’s part of the search effort—not while Scott was losing his spirit and Sheriff Stilinski won’t sleep. While Lydia was struggling to maintain it all in Scott’s heed and working on locating Stiles in a way that was distinctly separate from her Banshee ability.

While Kira tries to hunt down Malia, whom hasn’t appeared and is thought to be somewhere in New Mexico, looking for her mother. Whom has no idea what’s going on. Whom thinks Stiles is safely back in California, like he’d been last she’d been updated.

Derek doesn’t fathom leaving while Stiles is gone and his world is falling apart without him there to keep it together. He stays in a small flat he rents out on the edges of the town, and he buys food and clothing as-needed. He doesn’t spend a lot of time in there at first, too busy hounding Deaton with search efforts, but that soon changes.

Scott—worried he’ll scare his mother beyond what she’s already being subjected to—asks to stay at Derek’s place three days into the full-blown hunt they’ve taken on, and Derek can’t say no. Not when he looks a wreck and his hands haven’t stopped shaking. Scott was always the optimist, but something has broken with the loss of Stiles, and Derek knows it has to be fixed. He can’t leave until it is, which means he can’t leave until Stiles is found. Which brings him full circle, back to square one.

At one point, Derek offers to keep watch on Liam, but Scott rejects the offer, explaining that Liam’s been forming his own section of pack, and that watching Liam helped, even if the guy was a little too much of a handful at times. Derek explains that he’s been there—looking directly at Scott as he does, and a sheepish smile surfaces, bringing back just a bit of the old Scott for the moment. It vanishes as quickly as it comes—but it’s something. Something was a start.

When three days turns over into a week, Lydia shows up, matching bags both in her hands and under her eyes, and Derek doesn’t turn her away. Then Kira, though she doesn’t stay for longer than a night at a time, and, then, at the curb of two weeks, Malia. She looks sunken, sullen. Tired.

She sleeps with Lydia on the bed both Scott and Derek surrender, and then vanishes two days later without a word. In search of Stiles or her mother, Derek doesn’t know, but he hopes both are found sooner rather than later.

The rest stay on in their own search, school a struggle on the weekdays and the weekends dedicated in whole to twenty-four-hour hunts for their friend. They rotate turns checking in on the Sheriff to make sure he’s not killing himself with worry and work, and on their own methods of searching, sleeping, and repeating. Deaton claims Stiles is still somewhere nearby, because a foreign magic signature, as scattered and unfollowable as it’s proving to be, started showing up in bursts and spatters the day Stiles had vanished, and he’s certain that it’s another witch looking for the Hale emblem. Derek hopes he’s right, because it’s pretty much the only thing they have to go on.

At one point, they attempt at contacting Argent, desperate for some form of help, but they hear nothing back. It doesn’t stop them, though. It doesn’t even slow them down.

They continue on searching, because they must. Because they _will_ find him.

Stiles Stilinksi has officially been missing for three weeks, and, frankly, his friends have had enough of it.

\---

“The Sheriff’s on to us,” Lydia says as she walks through the door, slipping off her heels and shutting it behind her with the ball of her foot. “Again.”

“He stopped being onto us at some point?” Scott asks, turning his head to watch her from his position on the couch, controller in-hand and bowl of chips in his lap. His homework lies forgotten on the table in front of him, repurposed as a coaster for Derek’s drink, who assumed the papers were old notes. Derek looks up from where he’s hunched over the weekly reporting of unusual happenings in Beacon Hills—a column in their newspaper that was run by one of the high school students—and gives her a nod of a greeting, which she returns.

“Okay,” Lydia amends, “fair enough.” She pads around the sofa and drops to the floor beside Derek, moving the coffee cup off the homework almost unconsciously as she peers at Derek’s newspaper. Usually, the column is filled with a mishmash of incorrect information and accusations of aliens rather than werewolves, but it had the occasion to be useful. “Anything?”

“No,” Derek says, which is always his answer. It had _the occasion_ to be useful, but it was anything but at the time they needed it most. He takes the cup from her and drinks what’s left in it, and Lydia sighs at the negative response and turns her attention onto the relieved homework.

“Isn’t this due tomorrow?” she asks Scott, more accusingly than asking based on her tone. Scott glances at the homework briefly.

“I’ll do it tonight.”

“Will you? Because, from what I remember, we scheduled you to go out tonight, like you’ve been doing _every_ night.” Lydia’s nail raps on the papers, and ominous _tap tap tap_ of urgency and accusation. “That doesn’t leave a lot of room for homework.”

Scott frowns. “It’s just History.”

“It’s your senior year, are you just going to blow the whole semester?”

“It’s one assignment!”

“Rolling ball, Scott,” Lydia says, shaking her head. “Stiles wouldn’t want you failing on his behalf and you know it.”

“Yes he would,” Scott mutters in reply, pouting. “I’ll do it after this round.”

“Thank you.”

Derek eyes flicker between Lydia and Scott as they argue, then settle on Lydia when she wins. He feels like some sort of input should be given from him, considering it’s his house and Scott is pretty much living here, but he doesn’t. Lydia handles it fine. When she looks back at him, he only blinks at her.

“Are you making dinner tonight?” she asks. If her authority in his house is supposed to bother Derek, it doesn’t. She might not be his alpha, and she might not even be a part of his pack anymore, but something about the way she handles him and the situations surrounding him keeps him from wanting to do anything but let her lead.

It was a weird feeling, like a mix of comfort and submission and something else, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it. He simply lets it happen.

Derek hesitates at the question. “I can, before I go out.” Like Scott, Derek went on every single search they held, every night, without fail. Unlike Scott, he didn’t have to juggle school with late-night hunts and a lack of sleep—he slept the moment he got home, whereas Scott couldn’t get a wink in until he got back from school. It meant Derek was left to most of the informational work when Lydia was too busy to help him, and that he did all the cleaning and most of the cooking. “Is there anything you want me to make?”

Lydia shrugs. “No preference. Scott?”

“Anything but pasta. I’m so sick of pasta.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “I don’t see you making the dinner. If you don’t like it when I make pasta, say something before I make it or make something yourself.”

“I am,” Scott protests. His fingers punch the buttons of the controller and he leans in his seat like it can change the game. It can’t—that’s not a Wii he’s playing. “I’m telling you now. Do you really want me making dinner?”

No, Derek really doesn’t. He’d yet to let Scott actually attempt at it, but he’d heard of stories of Scott’s cooking, and Derek only rented the place he was in now. He’d like to keep his security deposit, if possible. “Steak?” Derek tries. He receives a thumbs-up from Scott and a nod from Lydia, then wonders if Kira would be joining them. She usually did.

Grabbing his cup, Derek stands from the table and moves to the sink to rinse it out and then check how much steak they have in the freezer, wondering if he needs to stop at the grocery store that evening.

Not for the first time, the weirdness of the situation ghosts through his mind as he realizes how domestic his train of thought was. It was never this collected with Erica and Boyd and Isaac, when they’d been a part of his pack and learning the ropes. Why was it the loss of Stiles that pushed them together and made them cooperate as a family—as a real pack, despite the fact they weren’t really together as one? The urgency had scattered them in the beginning, caused unending stress and anxiety, but now, three weeks into their settled routine—this?

This calm? This lack of immediate haste and anxiety to bring Stiles back?

What was _this_?

Derek’s cup slips from his grip and crashes into the sink, chipping the rim right where he usually drank from it. “Shit,” he hisses, picking up the broken piece of ceramic before it can get caught somewhere else and tossing it into the garbage bin. It’s after a moment of glaring at the broken cup that he realizes he can’t hear the noises of the game anymore.

Lydia and Scott are both staring at him when he looks over the island counters to see why the game had stopped. Scott’s expression startles Derek—it’s one he wore weeks ago, when he had first started to break in the wake of Stiles’ absence. Like he had heard Derek’s thoughts and was now thinking them himself. Like the guilt of living this way when Stiles was nowhere to be found was all Scott could feel in this moment, and it killed him to feel it.

There’s silence between the three of them, and it stretches on for what seems like an eternity before Scott sets the controller and bowl aside and stands up, grabbing his jacket off the back of the couch and leaving the flat without a word. Lydia and Derek both watch him go, then look at each other when the door catches shut.

Derek feels like a fool for thinking they had calmed, even for the short time he thought it. The storm was still there, and it was still raging against them as hard as it could.

“We have to find him,” Lydia whispers before Derek can lose himself to his thoughts. “We don’t have any other choice. None of us will handle it if we can’t.”

Derek stares at her, but he can’t say anything against her statement, because she’s right.

They had to find Stiles. No other option existed.

\---

Another night passes without sign or clue of Stiles. Then another, and then another again. Still, they keep trying. Deaton assures them he’s doing everything he can, tracking even the smallest spark of magic that his measures catch. It’s just never enough. They need more.

They need a real lead. Knowing Stiles was probably alive— _probably_ , God help them all—and the witch—witches? There was magic involved, they knew that much, but no ends met when they tried to puzzle out the _how_ when it came to the _why_ —was keeping him as collateral for their next move kept them moving and searching and fighting, but it wasn’t enough.

It’s Derek’s turn to check on the Sheriff that morning, and he spends it lost in his own thoughts as he waits for the Sheriff to pull into his driveway and get out of the car. He hears the car coming long before he sees it, but the sight of the Sheriff dragging himself out of the vehicle never makes the task of watching him easier. His movements are slow, and Derek knows without looking that he looks haggard and exhausted from lack of sleep and unending worry. It gives Derek just another reason to bring Stiles back in one piece.

“I know you’re there, Derek.”

The words startle Derek to himself, more than it would have if he hadn’t spent the night running around the expanse of Beacon Hills, and he blinks stupidly through his viewpoint between the bushes.

Not that he was in the _bushes_ , exactly. He was somewhat edged around them, hidden more by the house itself than the actual foliage.

It wasn’t as creepy as it sounded.

When he steps out from his hiding place, the Sheriff just gives him a look, one Derek feels is usually reserved for Stiles when Stiles did something unnecessary and kind of weird. Derek can relate, having used the expression various times himself, but he’s not used to it being used on _him_. The Sheriff shakes his head.

“How did you know I was there?” Derek finds himself asking, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“You’re the only one who hides,” the Sheriff—whom Derek knows has a first name and wasn’t born “Sheriff Stilinski”, but Derek had never bothered to learn it—says, leaning against his car and crossing his arms. “I always know it’s your turn to check on me because you’re the only one I never see standing on my front porch waiting for me.”

Derek blinks rapidly, then scrubs a hand over his face. Lydia, Scott, and Kira never hid? Not even Malia, during the few times she’d popped back into town? No wonder the Sheriff knew what was going on the whole time. And they never let Derek in on it?

Yeah, they probably planned it like that. He’d give them hell for it later.

“Besides,” the Sheriff continues, pulling Derek from his head once again, “I didn’t get my position by being oblivious. You might want to rethink the color scheme when hiding in broad daylight. Coffee?”

The Sheriff turns and leaves as Derek glances down at his clothing choices for the day, then follows behind after a beat. He’s directed to the kitchen table once he’s through the door, and he sits in one of the chairs heavily, too tired to bother not showing it. From the look the Sheriff gives Derek over his shoulder, he understands.

He understands completely, Derek knows. He was holding it together, but Derek knew that his strength came from his job, and from losing his wife. Derek wouldn’t let him lose his son.

While the Sheriff busies himself with the coffee, Derek glances around areas of the house he can see from his seat. It’s clean, almost to the point where it seemed unlived in. Which didn’t make sense, but at the same time made too much. The only thing to throw the display off was the mail piling up on the table, which Derek looked over when his eyes reached it, catching a name he’d gone years without knowing or remembering, if he had ever known—Noah Stilinski.

Noah? Not the name Derek had thought for him. He seemed more like a John. Which only made him wonder, what was _Stiles’_ name? No way his name was actually Stiles Stilinski. His parents couldn’t have been that cruel.

“Cream and sugar?” Noah asks Derek as he plops a spoon into each mug. Derek closes his eyes with a sigh after giving the affirmative to both, telling himself to go for a good run once he slept. Being this lost in his own mind was dangerous, especially at a time like this.

“Scott looked better,” Noah says, seated just across from Derek and shifting through the mountain of mail. Both cups of coffee sit between them untouched, and Derek reaches and takes one. “Kid was a wreck at first. I haven’t seen him that upset since his dad left.”

Derek hesitates on his first sip. He didn’t know everything there was to know about Scott’s father, but he did know that something bad had happened and his father had left after being kicked out. Scott had never been able to give all the details—he didn’t remember them. Losing his father without really understanding why must have been hard on him, Derek realizes, and then feels the prickle of guilt along his throat.

Derek knew what it was like to lose family, he knew better than possibly anyone Scott was acquainted with. He shouldn’t have looked over the possibility of Scott feeling something similar. Stiles wouldn’t have.

Stiles.

When Derek looks at Noah again, he knows his expression isn’t one of total indifference—he can’t pull that shit. Not with Stiles’ own dad. Noah looks back at Derek, and he suddenly looks much, much older. “I trust you, Hale,” he tells Derek, his voice level, calm, almost authoritative. “You guys are my best hope. You’re the best he’s got going for him.”

The unspoken words ghost through the air, but Derek catches every one of them.

 _You can’t fail me_ , they say. _You can’t_.

\---

Running around Beacon Hills is nothing like running around New York.

The trees are different, the air is different. It feels like home, like familiarity, like something he wished he didn’t have to leave. A nap might not have fixed him from his talk with the Sheriff, but the run is getting Derek closer.

He smells nothing by way of _Stiles_ while he’s out, but he never does. It’s always Deaton or Scott or Malia that get anything, sometimes Kira feels a hint of magical electricity on her turns, but Derek never senses a thing. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t have the time to think about it. He doesn’t have the energy to waste, doesn’t have the emotions to allow the feelings it would evoke.

He didn’t want to think about it, and, luckily for him, he just plain couldn’t.

It was a blessing in disguise, his diligence. His stubbornness. His learned-capability of shoving anything that didn’t fit to the side to be dealt with once the more urgent matter was taken care of.

Scott is home from school and moping on the couch when Derek returns from his run, playing with the cracked phone Stiles hadn’t had time to switch from since returning from New York. It had been found in his Jeep, which hadn’t left the driveway of his house. Another mystery that just makes this all so much more difficult to comprehend. Once the search on the police department’s end had been called to a close—much to the Sheriff’s protests, but he could do nothing when there was no sign of Stiles for them to track, and, aside from his Jeep still being in the driveway, it looked as if Stiles had simply run away—they’d returned the evidence they had gathered, and Scott had been the one to take the phone.

Derek meanders up behind him and leans onto the back of the couch, breathing heavily in a way he knew would bug Scott. Scott glances up at him with mild annoyance and mutters a greeting before returning his eyes to the phone screen and flicking through the pictures.

“How did you get into that?” Derek asks.

“Stiles always uses the same password,” Scott replies. Another picture, one of Lydia and Malia, slides by. Scott doesn’t pause on it. “He goes through phones a lot.”

“That seems to be a reoccurring problem for all of us. Wait,” Derek reaches out and stills Scott’s swiping thumb before it can move the picture featured on the screen. It’s a dark, blurry picture with blinding smudges of colored lights in the corners. “That’s the club we went to.”

“I think this one was an accident,” Scott says dismissively, reaching to swipe again. “It sucks. I can’t see anything.”

Derek rolls his eyes. Scott was still sulky about the fact Stiles had gotten to go and he hadn’t. Less so now that Stiles was paying the price of being there, but Scott was still a teenager with a want to go to a big city like New York.

Deciding Scott would be okay on his own for a bit, Derek pushes away from the back of the couch, about to head off for a shower, when a familiar song echoes up from the device and Derek suddenly realizes Scott’s watching a video from the club. A video of Derek.

Dancing.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Derek groans just as Scott bursts out laughing.

“Dude!” Scott exclaims, holding the phone up. “Nice moves! I didn’t know you could dance.”

Derek scowls at him and reaches to take the phone, but Scott pulls it away and continues watching. Then, something catches Derek’s eye, and he grabs it from Scott in a swift swipe.

“Hey!” Scott protests, twisting in his seat and grabbing for the phone. Derek pulls it up out of his reach.

“Shut up,” Derek says automatically, pausing the video and rewinding it. Using his finger, he slides through the frames slowly, his eyes on one of the girls pressing her body to his. For a split-second, a flash of silver swings into view at her cleavage, and Derek outright growls. Scott looks at him, startled.

“What?” Scott asks, scrambling to his knees to see what Derek sees. “Derek, _what_?”

Derek turns the phone to face Scott. Leaning in, Scott squints at the picture.

“Her necklace,” Derek prompts impatiently, then shoves the phone at Scott. He fumbles with it, eyes still on the screen. “It’s the one Stiles said the witch was wearing when he kidnapped us. It was missing when we found him dead, but that’s the same symbol Stiles drew for Deaton.” Derek growls again, the sound reverberating deep in his chest. “They’re all connected. They’re a _clan_.”

Scott looks up at Derek, and his face is deathly pale.

“Who are they?” he asks. His hands start to tremble again. Derek’s already pulling a new shirt on and digging in his pocket for his keys.

“I don’t know,” says Derek, “but we’re going to find out.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where some of those trigger warnings come into play. I'm pretty sure I've still got them all tagged, but let me know if that's not the case.

The search is painstaking.

It takes days, the better part of a week, despite the new information they have. Despite the fact they know—or, at least, are _pretty goddam sure_ —that Stiles has been kidnapped by the remaining members of the clan that the man, the first witch, had belonged to. It almost hurts more than it had before, knowing how to get to him but not being able to figure out the specifics.

The most annoying part—the part that makes Derek want to smash his head against a wall simply because of how _easy_ it makes everything in hindsight—is the fact that the scent of the girls, the two witches he’d danced with in the club, was still on the jacket he’d worn that night. Because you _don’t wash leather jackets_.

Despite the cloying odor of sweat and too many body sprays that cling to the material, it’s shockingly easy for each of them, the ones who had the ability to sharpen their senses, to take the scents and run through the woods around Beacon Hills, looking for the correct trail to go by. Stiles’ scent is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, but the unfamiliar aroma of the females is enough to jar them into tracking it once it’s recognized.

It stills takes days, the better part of a week, to actually match any of the scents to what they were looking for, but it happens to them.

It happens to Derek. And the moment he catches it, he yells loud enough for the whole forest to hear, despite it being almost four in the morning when it happens. He doesn’t wait for anyone to respond or to catch up to him, though he knows Deaton and the others will give him hell for it later because of how dangerous the clan is, because he’s scared he’ll lose the scent in the time it would take. Instead, he follows the trail, and hopes to God he’s found what they’ve been searching for for so long.

\---

The scent takes him nearly out of Beacon Hills, growing fresher and stronger the longer he follows it. It’s nearly overwhelming at one point, feeding his growing anger over how far they had taken Stiles, and then starts to fade as he nears a road that runs alongside that stretch of forest.

Derek frowns the moment he realizes, hesitating just out of view of whatever potential cars might be traversing the road this early in the morning. How could the scent be fading out? There had been no structure, nowhere to have hidden, that Derek had seen. Turning around, Derek backtracks, taking different ways each time he reaches the spot where he’s decided the scent is the strongest, but always receiving the same results. The scent just … fades in all directions. Which means …

Derek looks up, but he knows there’s no way they could be hiding in the trees. She was a witch, not a werewolf, and Stiles was only human. And these trees were _big_. It wouldn’t make any sense.

So, if they didn’t go up, then they must have gone …

Derek drops to the ground, his knees thumping against the dirt and grass and dead leaves of the forest floor. It only takes him a moment to find it once he knows what he’s looking for, and his heart jolts almost painfully when he feels his fingertips brush against it.

A rotting wooden trapdoor, hastily shoved into the floor of the woods, covered in enough debris to mimic the ground. To smell like it. Charred runes cover the wood, but they’re sloppy. One is even incomplete. Were these really the witches that had destroyed the wards around his house? They seemed like amateurs. Derek could make better runes, and he wasn’t even learned in anything related to magic.

Ignoring the voice in his head screaming at him to stop and contact the others—a voice that sounds strangely like Stiles—Derek slashes through the runes of the trapdoor with his elongated nails, effectively rendering them useless in their mediocre state, then throws open the door and slips in, shutting it behind him.

The hallway he finds himself in is lit as he slips down the short ladder, which surprises Derek. His ears tell him no one is moving around, not nearby, but why would they have left a lantern down here, on? Were they coming back?

Then, as his eyes move from the lantern to the rest of the area, he realizes the underground fort is nothing but a hallway ending in a room—a temporary holding area. If they weren’t here, they’d be back soon, and the fact Derek had happened upon the area just when they weren’t around sends the alarm bells in his head ringing again, but Derek was too close to bother listening to them. He would have to save the pondering of why and how for Deaton’s brain, when he got back and explained. Stiles came first—if he was even here.

It’s not until he’s sliding into the room at the end of the hallway, which smells overwhelmingly of ozone, that Derek realizes something—Stiles’ scent had never been present alongside the witch’s scent. Derek had been so focused on finding it that he had forgotten to think about the fact he couldn’t smell _Stiles_.

But when he notices someone slumped against the dirt wall of the room, he understands why that had been. The person smells slightly of the boy they’d all been looking for, but the smell of ozone drowns his scent to the point of cloying it directly away from recognition. But the small, almost insignificant trace was still there, and this was either Stiles, or someone who had been in contact with him recently.

Derek, unable to detect a third scent among the two to tell him it’s _not_ Stiles, momentarily loses control of his common sense, stepping further into the room before his brain has a chance to catch up and throw out the necessary signals to be cautious.

“Stiles?” Derek tries tentatively, knowing it’s possibly one of the dumbest moves he’s ever pulled, but the person twitches like a wince, and Derek knows it’s him. “Oh, fuck. Stiles.”

Derek can’t move. It’s Stiles, it’s definitely Stiles slumped against that wall, his brain tells him. It has to be.

His hair is slightly too long, and he’s wearing clothing so dirty Derek almost doesn’t recognize it, but the moment Derek can comprehend anything about the person’s appearance it becomes clear to him that this is Stiles.

_This is Stiles_.

“Stiles,” Derek tries again, hissing in a whisper that seems too sharp to his own ears. “It’s me, Derek. _Derek_. Are you—Can you hear me?”

Derek still can’t move. Something is cementing his feet to the dirt floor, though he can’t bring himself to wonder if it’s nerves, horror, or magic that keeps him there. His heart is thundering in his ears, and he focuses on telling it to shut up.

Whispers suddenly echo in the air around them, snapping Derek’s attention back onto his predicament, and it takes a moment for Derek to realize they’re all coming from Stiles, who is still slumped and immobile against the wall of the room. Derek shakes his head, his feet suddenly slipping slightly against the dirt, and the whispers turn to one. Something thumps faintly in the distance, sparking a new sense of alarm in Derek.

He had to hurry—they could come back at any minute.

“Stiles,” he tries again, “we’ve looked for weeks, we’ve—” Derek cuts himself off, suddenly struck by movement from Stiles’ previously still form.

Stiles lifts his head slowly; Derek can see his dirty hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat and dried blood, the small cuts that pepper the skin around his face and down his neck. Derek can feel his eyes flashing in a surge of emotions as he understands the damage he’s witnessing, but he can’t figure out anything to say. Stiles watches Derek rake his eyes over him. His lips part and Derek’s breath catches in his chest. But the words he whispers are too quiet for even Derek to hear.

“What?” Derek asks, softly. Too fearful of what might happen if he wasn’t careful, because it was clear Stiles was not alright. “I can’t hear you, Stiles.”

And then Stiles is standing straight, firm, like a pillar of the strength he’d been missing moments before. His hands crackle with light. Light that Stiles had never been able to conjure before. The smell of ozone is everywhere.

They had done something to him.

“What. Were. You. _THINKING_?!” Stiles roars, ripping Derek’s attention back onto him, and the dirt walls of the room shudder with power.

The words seem to pull from Stiles’ throat, slipping through his clenched teeth like water despite the way they boomed in the air around them with enough force to rock Derek back a step. Derek stares in horror, his canines puncturing his bottom lip where he had unconsciously shifted.

This wasn’t what he had expected to find. Stiles was alive—but was he still _Stiles_?

Anger burns deep in Stiles’ gaze, his pupils blown and scathing into Derek’s. The dark circles beneath his eyes grow stark on his pale face as Derek’s instincts kick in, willing him to finish the process and fully wolf out. Dirt is smudged beneath Stiles’ cheek, like a dark, mottled bruise, and Derek tries to focus on that and will himself to calm down. The room feels like it’s getting hotter by the second. His skin felt like it was buzzing along his muscles, humming with something unfamiliar, and Derek wanted nothing more than to rip it off and make it stop.

Magic. Derek’s heart twists and stutters in horror as realization smacks into him. _Magic_.

They’d toyed with him. Tortured him, maybe.

_Changed_ him. This wasn’t the boy Derek had left, and he nearly chokes on the wrath that surges up his throat, his features wolfing out fully in his momentary total loss of control. Stiles watches him, his hand absentmindedly picking at a dirty scrap of the ruined flannel shirt he still wore, and Derek recognizes the fidgety motion as something purely Stiles.

The relief is instantaneous. He was still in there, somewhere.

Derek doesn’t know the details, doesn’t _really_ know what it is he’s witnessing right now, but he allows the idea to anchor him in and calm him again. Just enough. He raises shaking hands, brow furrowed and throat catching with genuine fear for his friend.

“Stiles,” says Derek, slowly, with a long pull of a breath. His tongue feels dry as sandpaper in his mouth. “We couldn’t just leave you. We—Scott is _beside_ himself.” Shaky, but calm. Stiles was there, he was. “We had to look for you. There was no other option. None of us would have been able to live with ourselves if we didn’t try.”

The corner of Stiles’ lips twitch. “Aw, good ol’ Scotty Boy, worried the big bad witches would throw me in their oven and bake me? _Hah!_ ” The laugh is short, barked, with the edges of that invisible force Derek had felt him use before. There is no humor in it. Derek doesn’t dare to blink. “Don’t I wish.”

Derek stares at Stiles. The words don’t sound anything like _Stiles_ , but the voice is his. Laced with magic of some sort, amplified by an alien force, but definitely Stiles. _It has to be him_ , Derek’s mind keeps pushing. It _has_ to be.

“We’re worried. How could we not be, after what happened in New York? After—” Derek stops, stumbling over his words. The idea that Stiles thinks they could have just walked away, when Stiles had been kidnapped …?

Stiles’ lips quirk again, then pull into a lopsided smirk. “After what the Nogitsune did to me? Gee, bet you wish it was another case of that so you’d know how to fix me up all nice and pretty and Stiles-y again, huh? Oh, but you weren’t there, were you?” Stiles tilts his head, and his eyes flash with something. Derek risks a step towards him, ignoring the guilt blooming in his chest, but Stiles doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes have closed, but then they slide back open, and they’re Stiles again. Just for a moment.

“Nah, man,” Stiles continues, lifting his hands up to his shoulders and slowly dragging them down the length of his body in gesture. “It’s _aaaaaaall_ me in here this time. All of it.” He winks. “Lil’ fucked up on magic, sure, but no ethereal entity holding these reigns. Not this time.”

Derek swallows, keeping his composure even though his saliva feels like glue in his throat. “We have to go back, _now_. Before they come back. Scott and Lydia are—”

“Yeah, yeah. Looking for me.” Stiles waves his hand, bored. “Got that. Let them look, I’ll turn up eventually. I always show up where I’m needed at some point.”

The anger returns with a jolt, spreading red across his vision. Derek curls his shaking hands into fists at his side. His teeth clench, and he can feel himself starting to change again. This time, he doesn’t try to pull back, because now this was bullshit. He was not about to let the witches win; Stiles was not their pawn to play around with.

“Your father is _terrified_ for you, Stiles. He’s sent out search parties, looking for you. He looks himself on his downtime, going places he shouldn’t even when we warn him not to. He doesn’t sleep, forgets to eat, because _you’re missing_.”

The twisted humor, the distinctly _not-Stiles_ expression, falls from his face. He looks vulnerable now, like the Stiles Derek knows. Like the Stiles Derek has been looking for.

“Dad,” he whispers, almost to himself. Like he can’t believe his own father would go looking for him. Derek’s eyes narrow as Stiles’ drop to the dirty floor.

There was no question now, as if there had been before. Stiles was—is—manipulated by whatever magic the witches had used on him. To think no one would look for him?

No one would care?

Stiles was smarter than that. He knew better.

“Stiles,” Derek starts, watching Stiles’ eyes as they look back up again. “We have to go. We have to get out of here.”

Stiles watches him, his fingers still picking at the piece of flannel. He doesn’t move from where he stands, even when Derek motions to him to follow.

“Stiles, _come on_ ,” Derek pushes, but Stiles simply looks at him.

“Did you even try to figure out how it happened?” Stiles asks, throwing Derek into confusion.

“What?”

“Doesn’t it seem kind of odd—” Stiles continues, his voice mellowing out, hinting at patronizing. Belittling. “—that they knew the Hale family had something so powerful? Years after you had left the state? That they managed to get past the new wards as if they were simple alarms?”

Derek’s brow wrinkles in confusion. “We figured out that the witches must have been inside the area already when the wards were created, then they destroyed them to get out. That, or they destroyed them when they kidnapped us to get in. They were the ones who broke them in the first place. The medallion, though, I mean. The Hale pack was revered, they must have had an idea that—”

But Stiles shakes his head slowly. His lips curl up into a smile again, but it’s not a nice one. Derek’s heart sinks.

“No, that just doesn’t make sense. Peter thought it was burned up, but Laura knew it was still intact. Doesn’t that seem a little … hm, _strange_ , to you, that they knew that, too? _How_ did they know?” Stiles sneers, his head cocked at an angle. His hands ball into fists, and then his expression is pure anger. “ _HOW DID THEY KNOW, DEREK?_ ”

Derek clutches his head with a hand, the magic in Stiles’ shout reverberating in his skull. “What—?”

Stiles sighs. “The disk, Derek, the disk! How did they know? Laura was friends with someone, close friends! Think she told that someone a little something?” Stiles’ voice rises, sing-song and disturbing. “E-L-I-Z-A! I didn’t think anything of it when Sparky McGee showed up as a big bloody mess, buuuut! Doesn’t that seem _odd_?”

Derek’s brain won’t cooperate. There’s too much magic in the air. There’s too much magic in _Stiles_. “We didn’t—” he grits out through his teeth in a growl. “She was going to help us fix the wards, she didn’t know we had—”

Stiles clicks his tongue. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. But, you know, being trapped in a dark place for long lengths of time gives you plenty of opportunities for mind-wandering and pondering! And you know what I realized? How did she find him so easily? We couldn’t track him if we tried! How did she _just_ _happen_ to find him and leave him for us to see? Doesn’t that fish seem a little too red?”

Derek stares, realization dawning on him. How _?_ Why had he not questioned this before?

_How?_

“Ah, there we go,” Stiles says softly, a smile pulling at his lips. “There’s that lightbulb.”

“You think Eliza was in on this?” Derek can’t mask his disbelief. “You think she’s the one who told them about the Hale medallion?”

“Dunno.” Stiles raises his hands in a shrug. “Just seemed suspicious. Are you sure that was Laura’s handwriting on that note? I think it wasn’t her handwriting, personally. But, what do I know? I’m the _second-best_ researcher.”

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek starts.

“Okay, okay. Yeah. Saw her when I was being, ah,” Stiles flinches, “messed with? Yeah, that sounds family-friendly. She’s in on it.”

For a moment, everything goes cold and white. The feeling of Stiles walking past him startles enough to keep him from going fully incoherent, but it’s not enough to get him past the shock.

_What_?

“She was that close to you, huh?” Derek hears Stiles ask from behind him. He sounds just like the Stiles Derek knew, but Derek knows better. “Her betrayal is that surprising?”

Derek turns to look at him, unable to form an answer, but he’s gone. Derek can do nothing but follow him.

“Wanna know something else?” Stiles whispers to him when he catches up, squinting up out the door that still stood open to the darkness of the outside. Derek waves him back without answering, wanting to lead the way out in case they ran into someone they didn’t want to see. “Pretty sure Deaton knew.”

Derek’s head snaps in Stiles’ direction. Stiles looks back at him, looking sad. Any hint of—the _other_ Stiles, if it even existed, is gone.

“ _What?_ ”

That can’t be right. There’s no way.

But Stiles only shakes his head, regret clear on his face, and Derek has to squash the sense of betrayal that threatens to turn him inside out until after Stiles is safe from this place.

\---

“ _STILES_!”

There’s a blur of motion and black hair that almost clips Derek’s side as it passes, and Derek whips around to see Stiles being spun on his heel, Scott firmly clamped around him in a hug. They’ve turned in their momentum—Derek can’t see Stiles’ expression—but Scott’s is still showing the panic he’d harbored every moment Stiles had been missing.

The fear, the regret.

The blame.

Scott’s lower lip trembles, his chin tucked firmly into Stiles’ shoulder so only parts of his face can be seen—and then they’re gone as he buries them into the filthy shirt Stiles still wears. Derek can see the tendons in Stiles’ neck just before he hugs Scott back—and then the way his arms tremble around him once they’re secure.

A moment later, Lydia and Kira amble up, both breathing heavily. Scott must have left them behind in his hurry to get to Stiles. Kira shows pure relief and happiness at the picture of Stiles and Scott embracing, but Lydia’s expression still shows devastation. Derek looks at her, and she looks back.

She shakes her head at him, once, minutely, then turns and rushes to throw her arms around the mass conjunction of the two boys. Kira follows shortly behind, and Derek is left in horrific speculation at what it was that Lydia could have possibly seen. It’s enough to make him forget about Deaton, if only so he can know what he needs to expect next.

\---

He corners her later that day, after they’ve dropped Stiles off at the hospital and into the waiting arms of his father and Scott’s mom, when she’s too tired to protest at her usual strength. Derek silently demands what they both know he wants to know from his seat on the too-sterile bench they both occupy in the waiting room. Lydia sighs and brushes a curl out of her face.

“There’s still something wrong,” she states simply. Derek stares at her. Obviously something was still wrong, Stiles had been messed with by witches for what was almost an entire month. There’s a _lot_ of things wrong right now. Derek says as much, but Lydia shakes her head. “No, not like that. I mean—the voices, there’s an insistence that this isn’t what I was—This isn’t it,” she finishes tiredly when the words don’t come. “There’s still something bad waiting to happen.”

Derek nearly gapes at her, unwilling to accept what she’s telling him. Stiles has been kidnapped twice now, nearly died in a fire, and been manipulated by magic to the point where he might be irreversibly damaged—and there was _still_ something in the cards?

“Stiles could still die,” Derek finally says, unable to care about bluntness.

Lydia looks into his eyes with a gaze that knows more than it ever wanted to. “We all die, Derek. But, God help me, this won’t be the time that Stiles does. I _won’t_ see that day coming, if I can help it.”

\---

When Derek reaches the veterinary’s office half an hour later, he slams the door open and storms into where he knows Deaton would be, ignoring the grinding noise the hinges make when the screws are forced out of their sockets.

“ _Why didn’t you tell me?!”_ Derek roars, his fingers sinking into the metal of the table he’s clenched onto. His anger boils beneath his skin, mixed with disbelief that Deaton would do this to him.

Deaton looks back at him calmly, almost sadly. “Please do not ruin my table, Derek. I have to replace that so often.”

“ _Answer_ me!”

“I am not psychic, I can’t understand what it is I should have told you if you won’t tell me.”

Derek snarls in response.

Deaton sighs. His hand briefly covers the bottom of his mouth, then he’s shaking his head. “Would you really have put all of your time into finding Stiles if you had known there was a chance Eliza had betrayed you?”

Derek hesitates. Would he have?

“Of course I would have,” Derek insists, though he knows there’s hesitance in his voice.

“No,” Deaton says simply. “We needed to find Stiles. We didn’t need you detracting your attention solely from that. Once he had been found, I would move you on to the next part—locating Eliza.”

Derek, face now mostly back to human, frowns quizzically beneath all the other emotions he’s feeling. “ _Locating_ her? She’s not a witch, she wouldn’t give off the same—energy.”

“She is not what she claimed to be when you last saw her. I contacted her pack when the first witch was found dead, but they refused to tell me anything. It wasn’t until Stiles was kidnapped that they agreed to give me information. She’s been banished from her pack, Derek.”

“But,” Derek stutters, “but she didn’t smell like an Omega. Her eyes—” Derek stops. Did he see what color her eyes were? Yellow, he could have sworn.

“It’s possible she found a new pack. A rogue one.” Deaton’s voice is soft, reassuring. It sends a spike of anger up Derek’s throat. “There’s a mutiny happening in New York, it’s difficult to tell where one faction ends and another begins. The pack must be in connections to the clan of witches.”

Derek’s breath leaves his lungs. “ _Mutiny_?”

“If I had known, I would have brought you home earlier,” Deaton says solemnly. “However, I did not know. Without a pack in New York to communicate with, it’s difficult to understand what happens in the supernatural part of the world that you cannot see.”

Derek’s head is spinning. His hand clutches at it, but it doesn’t stop it from almost making him sick. “The Druid,” Derek says suddenly. Desperately. “The Druid should have known. She should have told you.”

Now, Deaton looks sad. “A supernatural mutiny does not extend solely to werewolves and witches, Derek. She had no obligation to tell me anything.”

But she—” Derek starts. How could this have happened? “The wards. She put our wards up.”

“She did,” Deaton agrees, and now he looks as if he were proud of that fact. “And I do believe she is not the reason the witches were able to get in. She hid the medallion, did she not?”

Derek blinks. She _had_. When he had gone back to retrieve it, it remained hidden and untouched—would the Druid have taken it if she had been on the witches’ side?

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” says Deaton. “But I believe Maria is not against us.”

“How,” Derek asks, trying to comprehend everything that’s being said to him. “How the hell did Eliza get them in, then?”

“She’s working with the clan. And, if I’m correct,” Deaton starts, and his voice dips as he continues, “then the leader of this clan is an extremely powerful witch looking to win the war this mutiny has caused. And, to do that, they need the medallion.”

Derek stares at Deaton in disbelief, willing some form of relief to conjure, something to let him know he hadn’t just done something to bring everyone in harm’s way. But nothing comes.

Once again, he realizes, he has thrown everyone he cares for into a fire they may not be able to escape.

“They’re all here, aren’t they,” Derek says, breathless with his realization. “They all came to Beacon Hills. Because of me.”

Deaton’s expression turns grave. “They haven’t brought the war here,” he explains, “but this clan is very, very dangerous. If they get their hands on that medallion …” Deaton trails off with a shake of his head.

Shit. _Shit_.

“How do we fix this?” Derek asks, his desperation turning to anger as the words leave his mouth. “How do we get rid of them? Before they start hurting people?”

“I wish there were a simple answer, but finding them is difficult in itself—defeating them and getting them to go back to their side of the country? I don’t yet know how we’ll be able to accomplish that before hell breaks loose and puts many more lives in danger. We cannot hand over the medallion,” Deaton clarifies, and Derek wonders how the hell he knew that’s exactly what Derek was thinking they needed to do, if only to make them promise to leave everyone unharmed. “Doing so would be disastrous. They are not to be trusted by any means.”

Derek’s hands slowly rise to his face, smothering his breathing, his outpouring of emotions and anger. “The fuck are we supposed to do then? What do we _do_?”

Derek can hear the apology in Deaton’s voice when he says, “We have to kill them.”

Derek lowers his hands and looks at him, and that’s when he realizes they have no other choice.


	3. Chapter 3

When Derek visits him the next day, he finds Stiles in a drug-induced nap and Malia simmering over her own thoughts in a chair close enough to Stiles’ bed that she practically looms over him as he sleeps. Derek clears his throat, but she only spares him a glance out of the corner of her eye.

“How is he?” Derek asks when he realizes she’s not going to say anything, like he can’t hear the still-stuttering breathing Stiles does even in his sleep, or the way his fingers keep twitching minutely over the stiff white sheets he’s covered in. Maybe he’d always done that and Derek had just never been around to pay attention.

Even from where Derek stands in the doorway, beneath the cloying haze of bleach and sickness and death, he can tell Stiles still smells strongly of ozone.

“They hurt him,” Malia says. Derek can feel something in his chest constrict like a wince he doesn’t show. _She’s not wrong_ , Derek thinks. “Why does he keep getting hurt?”

 _Because he’s human_ , Derek answers to himself. Because he’s running around with beings more dangerous than he could ever be. Because they all get hurt in some way, at some point. No one is exempt in the line of duty they lead.

But Derek doesn’t say any of that. “Because I messed up,” he says instead, which also isn’t wrong. Malia fully turns in her seat and looks at him. He steps into the room and shuts the door behind him, leaning back against it with his arms crossed. The leather of his jacket squeaks with the movement. “I misjudged the situation and he got his with the consequences. I should have been more careful.”

Malia’s eyes study him as he speaks.

“Is that what he thinks?”

Derek hesitates, even though he knows Stiles well enough to say he doesn’t. But it is Derek’s fault—it’s Derek’s fault any of this is happening, because he didn’t question the note his sister left. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone would know about—or want, even, they very rarely dealt with witches—the family heirloom. If he had known it would cause this much trouble, he would have torn up the note and pretended he didn’t understand, at least until Stiles was out of the picture.

The note, what it had said had been so ambiguous. No true location mentioned, just a clue, but Derek had assumed that was Laura being cautious. It never struck him that someone was playing him with it, getting him to locate and remove the medallion from where Laura had hidden it. It might not have even been Laura’s handwriting on the note. Derek doesn’t know—he couldn’t remember what her handwriting looked like. Not enough to know the difference if the note had been forged.

He feels so stupid. Why does he always make these mistakes?

This wasn’t how true Alphas acted. This was just him fucking up and fumbling like he had the first time he’d become Alpha.

“I don’t love him,” Malia says suddenly, throwing Derek out of his own thoughts. He blinks, wondering what had made her switch tracks like that. “He’s a good guy, and he’s a lot of fun, and I like being with him a lot. But I don’t love him.”

Derek just looks at her, an uncomfortable feeling crawling up the back of his neck. This wasn’t his area of expertise, teenage problems, despite the drama he had himself back then. But, thanks to his own misguided actions, he was kind of stuck dealing with them perpetually. He curses his past self for not just trying to change adults and dealing with what came—or, in the least, _older_ teenagers. Ones with less perchance for drama.

“He probably told you that, though, didn’t he,” she says, like it’s not a question.

Derek shrugs. Stiles hadn’t, not really. They’d broken up for the time being, that’s all Stiles had said; love had not been a subject.

Malia sighs, looking over Stiles again. “He’s in love with Lydia, I think. Maybe. I don’t know what their relationship was before I met him, but he always looks at her differently than he does anyone else. I don’t look at anyone like that.”

“A look doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t—” Derek starts, unsure of why he’s even speaking, but Malia cuts him off.

“No. I know I don’t love him. I don’t think I can, not right now, when I have other things I want to be focused on.” She shakes her head. Sadly, or angrily, Derek can’t tell. “Something in my brain just won’t let me.”

Derek hesitates. “Oh,” he says lamely, because she looks back at him like she’s waiting for him to say something.

“Sorry,” she says. “Not a conversation someone wants to have with their long-lost cousin, I guess. I just want him back, even if I can’t seem to fall in love with him.”

Derek’s gaze slides to Stiles, covered in bruises and scratches and stitches, and the tension in his chest relaxes. He sees Malia watching him out of the corner of his eye. Derek wonders if the relief he feels shows on his face. “He is back,” Derek says, but Malia just looks at him.

It takes him a moment to realize that’s not what she meant, but, when Derek gives her a questioning frown, she looks away, and Derek decides he probably shouldn’t ask.

\---

Stiles ends up staying unconscious for the entirety of Derek’s visit, so he leaves him to Malia and ventures back to Deaton with the intention of drilling him for more potential theories regarding the clan and their connection with the mutiny, and to Eliza. He gets within a mile of the vet’s office when his phone goes off with a text, and a glance at it tells him it’s from a number he doesn’t know. Frowning, he drops a hand from the wheel and picks his phone up to read it.

 _We’re here_ , is all it says, and Derek is instantly confused. He pulls over, aiming to respond back and ask who’s texting him, but another text pings in before he can do so. _No one is here. Right place?_

His flat address follows the question, and Derek turns his car around and heads there without even thinking.

Who the hell would be at his place right now? Scott and the others (minus Malia) were at school, Noah and Deaton were at work. Plus, he had all of their numbers, and he had no idea whose number it was attached to the messages. It’s not like he gave his number out willy-nilly either.

Who the hell was—

Derek’s brain cuts itself off the moment he swerves his car into the small lot beside his flat and he finds a teenager standing by a car he doesn’t recognize. The teenager waves, then trots around to greet Derek as he opens his door.

“Hey, Derek!”

“Isaac?” Derek blinks at him, his memory flooding back. They had contacted Argent, and Isaac had last been seen leaving with him. “Where’s Argent? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?”

Isaac frowns, leaning on the door and preventing Derek from shutting it. “Didn’t think we needed to. Stiles is gone, why wouldn’t we come back and help?”

The sound of a car door opening stops Derek from replying, and a graying Chris Argent pulls himself out of the driver’s seat, nodding in greeting to Derek. “Hale,” he says.

Derek nods back. “We didn’t know you were coming,” Derek tells him.

“Didn’t think it was necessary. Took us a while to get back, though, sorry about that. Got stuck in Nova Scotia.”

Derek shakes his head. “We found him,” he says instead of furthering the subject. “He’s at the hospital right now.”

Chris frowns, and next to Derek Isaac jumps away from the car. “Now? Our hospital? Is he alright?”

“He’s …” Derek hesitates. “He’s hurt. Witches, still out there. We think they may have tortured him.”

Isaac’s expression is one of shock. “Can I go see him?”

“He might be asleep, but he’s allowed visitors,” says Derek. “Malia was there last I went.”

Isaac’s brow furrows. “Who’s Malia?”

Déjà vu flashes in Derek’s mind for a moment. Derek had been gone a while, but Isaac had been gone much longer. He had a lot of catching up to do.

“You’ll meet her. Scott’s mom is working, talk to her when you get there.”

“Here,” Chris says, tossing something to Isaac, whom catches whatever it is swiftly. When he opens his hands, a set of keys jingle between his fingers. “Take the car. I want to talk to Derek anyway.”

\---

Derek gets a text from Scott while he’s making coffee, yelling at him for not telling Scott Isaac was back and informing him that he wouldn’t be back until later.

“Scott’s got Isaac,” Derek tells Chris, who’s sitting on a stool at the island counter. “They’ll be back later.”

“That was fast,” Chris remarks with a small smile. “He didn’t bring the car back.”

“I can take you to it.” Derek pours the coffee and sets one in front of Chris, then leans against the counter with his own cup. “I wasn’t expecting you both to come,” Derek admits. “We didn’t know Isaac was still with you.”

“You know all about what can happen when you form a makeshift family,” Chris says. “You get attached and have trouble really leaving.”

Derek can’t disagree with that, not when he was back in Beacon Hills after being gone for less than a year.

Chris wraps his hands around his coffee, taking a long sip and then sighing against the rim in either contentment or defeat; Derek can’t be sure which. “It’s been kind of … weird,” he admits, setting the mug down on the table. “But not uncomfortable. Awkward, maybe, is a better word. The first few months we didn’t really know what to do with each other without Allison around to act as a buffer.”

Derek nods understandingly, internally marveling at how easily he spoke of his deceased daughter’s name and wondering how many conversations he and Isaac must have had about her. Chris was a hunter—and Derek had once thought their breed to be heartless by circumstance, but he knew better now. He knew her death must still sting, because she had been his child, and she’d died so young.

Chris shakes his head. “I’d only ever raised a girl before, and I thought that would have been the harder challenge to overcome. And, it was, I guess. Girls are still this enigma I don’t think I’ll ever be able to puzzle out, especially teenage ones.” Chris pulls a face, and Derek can’t help but nod in agreement, because he _knew_ how that was. “But, teenage boys that also happen to be werewolves fall into a category that I also have little to no experience in, so.” He chuckles. “Between my ignorance and Isaac’s pathetic excuse for a father to go on, it’s been a learning experience for the both of us.”

“He seems to be doing well,” Derek muses, taking a drink of his own coffee. “I wasn’t expecting him to mold back into the pack so easily after being an Omega this long.” After what had happened to make him leave in the first place, but Derek doesn’t say that.

“Isaac has that kind of ease with a lot of things he slides into. When we’d heard that we were wanted back in Beacon Hills and could check in if we found it necessary, he practically dragged me back by my ear.” Chris smiles, then immediately grows somber. “A lot has happened since we were last here.”

“A lot happens in Beacon Hills.”

“Is that why you’re back, too?” Chris asks him, and Derek blinks in surprise. “I’d heard word that you’d moved as we were making our way back in,” Chris admits at Derek’s expression. “We actually weren’t expecting you to be part of the welcome committee when we showed up. We thought this was someone else’s address until Isaac said it smelled like you.”

Derek chews his words over in his mind, then decides secrets are a bad way to go about this reunion, especially after all Chris had done for him. “I was only back to help Deaton with something, and I had been planning on heading out as soon as I got back from New York, but …” Derek trails off, and the mood drops even further. A silence envelopes them, broken only by Chris taking another drink of his coffee.

“Do you think the damage is permanent?” Chris asks after a long minute. Derek’s eyes are on his cup, and he doesn’t move. Chris didn’t ask if there _was_ damage, he knew there had to be. Derek can’t correct him, because he’s right. Stiles wasn’t the same.

“I really hope not. The kid’s gone through so much already.” And his father, Derek didn’t want the Sheriff to have to go through that. Or Scott. Or any of them.

Chris chuckles again, and Derek looks up, mildly surprised and curious. “Sorry,” Chris says, “I know you’re older than him, but, to an old man like me, you’re _both_ kids who have gone through way too much shit in their short lives.”

Derek guesses that’s fair. He only had something like five years on Stiles, whereas Chris had more like twenty-five.

Maybe. His math was probably off—even Derek sometimes forgot how old he was supposed to be. He blamed that on the various fake IDs he’d gone through.

“I’m worried,” Chris continues, and for a moment he sounds like a genuine father figure, and not just the hunter Derek always thought of him first and foremost. “He pulled out of that possession bullshit with more merit and strength than I ever thought he would, but it hasn’t been long enough since that incident for it not to add to what’s happening to him now. That can’t be easy on his mind.”

Derek flashes back to Stiles in the dirt room—oozing the smell of ozone and sparking with uncontrolled magic that wasn’t his own, his eyes flashing and his voice filled with power.

“He’ll be okay,” Derek says, staring into the depths of his coffee cup like it could make his uncertainty vanish. “He’ll be more than okay, we’ll make sure of it.”

\---

After they finish their coffee, Derek offers to drive Chris to the hospital to retrieve his car and decides to check in on Stiles again while he was there. Chris doesn’t follow him in, saying he’ll be by later when he knows he can talk to Mrs. McCall—Melissa, Derek should probably think of her, at least in his own head—without having to worry someone will eavesdrop. Derek doesn’t ask, because he can get the details he wants from other sources, and he enters the hospital to find Lydia a few steps from the door herself with a bag of fast food in her hand.

“Stiles-requested,” she explains when Derek greets her, which tells him Stiles is now awake and feeling good enough to eat. That’s a relief in itself.

When they enter the room, Stiles is sitting up in bed and tapping away furiously at his phone. He looks up when they enter, and his eyes light up the moment they settle on the bag in Lydia’s hand.

“Oh, fuck yes, thanks,” Stiles says, and Derek can’t stop the flood of relief that surges into him when he sounds purely Stiles. Stiles reaches his hands out in a grabbing motion, his eyes never once leaving the bag, and he nearly snatches it from Lydia’s grip once she’s close enough for him to reach. Without hesitating, he shoves his hand into the bag and pulls out a handful of fries, which he unceremoniously crams directly into his mouth. Lydia shares a look of disgust with Derek as an exaggerated moan slips out of Stiles’ filled mouth.

“Yeah, his appetite is fine,” Derek declares drily, making sure not to look Stiles in the face as he eats, lest he witnesses something he can never un-see.

“You wouldn’t believe the shit they fed me,” Stiles says once he has enough air to speak. “East-Coast assholes. Do they even know what In-N-Out is? A guy can only subsist on Wendy’s for so long before he loses his mind.”

Lydia, also refusing to look at Stiles while he eats, rolls her eyes in Derek’s direction. Derek barely restrains himself from returning the gesture in agreement.

“While you inhale your body weight in grease, I’m going to go to the lady’s room,” Lydia says, hefting her purse higher up onto her shoulder and turning in a whirl of red curls. “I can’t stand having that smell on my hands.”

Derek watches her leave. The moment the door shuts behind her, the rustling of the bag stops, and Derek turns back to find Stiles staring at him. For a moment, his heart is in his throat. Stiles’ expression from before is gone, and he looks at Derek with haunted, almost-panicked eyes ringed in dark bruises. One of his hands is wrapped securely around the wrist of the other, and his lips are pressed firmly together in a thin, pale line. The bag of food sits on his blanketed legs, and no part of him touches it.

The change is so sudden that Derek doesn’t know what to do, so he doesn’t do anything at all.

“I can’t sleep on my own,” Stiles whispers, and Derek suddenly notices that Stiles is shaking slightly. It’s just barely a tremble, but it reeks of terror. “I can’t fucking sleep, Derek,” Stiles continues, his voice low and rasped, “they had to drug me. I keep reliving it.”

Derek’s throat suddenly goes dry—so dry that he struggles to speak at first. “You need to tell us what happened, Stiles, what they did to you. We need to know, we can’t—”

“No,” Stiles says firmly. His head dips. “No, not that. Not them.”

Derek waits for more.

“The Nogitsune,” continues Stiles after a second. “I keep reliving him.”

Chris was right. Stiles had never recovered from that.

How could he have? The Nogitsune had possessed him, controlled him, turned him against everyone he loved and they all had been left to figure out how to fix it. The time when he first had thought he’d been going insane. The time when he then thought he’d been dying.

The chess board, the one Stiles had given his clues on for Derek, skips across his mind.

“I thought it was over,” Stiles says when Derek doesn’t say anything. “I thought I conquered that demon. Why am I still so afraid?”

A voice in his mind, some unknown force that he couldn’t identify, urges Derek to move forward and comfort Stiles. To touch him or grip his arm or offer some form of distraction and reassurance, of grounding, like his mother used to do when Derek had been younger and they’d come across a terrified bitten-beta or an Omega that had done nothing wrong. He takes a step, giving in to the urge, but Stiles doesn’t move, his head still down.

“I’m so fucking scared,” Stiles whispers, like he’s speaking to himself, almost too quiet for Derek to hear him. “It’s bullshit but I can’t stop.”

Stiles starts when Derek’s fingers brush his shoulder, the fabric of his hospital-issued gown rough on his skin. Stiles looks up at him, and the corner of his mouth curls just slightly before he’s finishing what Derek started and reaching up to hug him.

“We’re turning you into a big bag of mush,” Stiles mutters into Derek’s shoulder. “I’m telling everyone.”

Derek ignores him. “You’re not alone,” he tells Stiles quietly. Stiles stills. “You’re never alone. You have a pack, and they’ll always save you.”

Stiles shakes his head once, minutely, and Derek can feel the point of his chin digging into the muscle just before he starts to pull away.

“You can’t,” he mutters. “You can’t save me from this.”

\---

Derek forgets Lydia had even been there in the first place up until he runs into her just outside of Stiles’ room when he leaves. Stiles had calmed and returned to eating, and Derek had stood awkwardly in the corner quietly until Melissa had come into the room and Derek had decided that was his cue to leave. She’s leaning against the wall with her head down and her arms crossed, and Derek stops in his tracks when he sees her.

“I know he’s faking it,” Lydia says before Derek gets a word out. “When I’m in there, he doesn’t act like he actually feels. Why is he doing that? I’ve seen him worse.”

“I think he’s doing it for himself,” Derek answers. His fingers fumble with his keys from inside the pocket of his jacket. “He’s not okay. Faking it makes it okay for a little bit.”

Lydia looks at him, her head tilted, for a long moment. Then, she sighs. “He needs better coping mechanisms. I can’t help him if I don’t know where to look.”

“Yes, you can,” Derek says. Lydia’s brow quirks up. “The same way you always do. Don’t let him be alone. Be what he’s used to you being, normal is better than the shit going on in his head.”

Lydia blinks at him, then pushes away from the wall and brushes past him. “You’re smarter than you look, sometimes,” she tells him as she ghosts past, and Derek decides he’s going to take that as an insult. He stews over it, questioning himself on how he looks, the entire drive back to his flat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw the trailer for season 6B and I have so many words and a heaping mound of confusion over certain things. I'm very torn between being upset and being excited, all for different reasons.
> 
> Let me just.
> 
> AAAAUGHH.
> 
> Okay. I'm done. Until next chapter.


	4. Chapter 4

Stiles is released, and Scott and the others, for some reason, decide that this means they need to all be in the waiting area when Stiles is wheeled out for his dad to take him home in the Jeep. All of them. Even Chris is there, looking amused as Noah frowns and mutters to himself about the mass of teenagers that surround his son like a wall. Melissa looks less than thrilled herself as she pushes Stiles out to hand over to his father, trying not to run over any toes as she goes, and Derek only briefly witnesses Scott trying to slip past Kira in an attempt at escaping before his mother grabs his shirt by the shoulder and tugs him out of sight.

Stiles, though, looks both relieved to be leaving and thrilled that everyone’s in the waiting area, trying to all talk to him at once, like they hadn’t all had a chance to visit him more than once while he’d been admitted. Derek stands to the side, giving Noah an entertained smile when he shakes his head in defeat and starts pushing Stiles out of the building.

“Hey, Derek.” Derek looks towards the beckon for his attention and finds Stiles turned in his wheelchair, craning his neck to see around his dad. His face is glowing. “You coming by tonight?”

Derek frowns, then blinks a few times in confusion. Stiles asked like it had been a normal occurrence before Derek had moved, but when had Derek _ever_ gone by Stiles’ house? And why did Stiles want him by now?

Was there something going in that everyone had conveniently not told Derek about?

Actually, that wouldn’t be an uncommon occurrence. He hopes it isn’t some teenage gathering with gossip and gross stories about things Derek never wanted to know, because he’s way too old for that kind of crap.

But he’s not going to say no, and Stiles, from the look in his eye, knows Derek won’t say no.

“Okay,” Derek agrees like they both knew he was going to. “When?”

Stiles glances up at his dad. “Seven?”

“See you at seven, Derek,” Noah calls without turning around, already pushing Stiles out the door. Derek watches them until they’re mostly out of view, then realizes the room is strangely quiet. When he looks back, everyone—even the nurse behind the desk—is staring at him. Scott looks flabbergasted, and both Chris and Melissa look like they’re trying not to laugh. Isaac and Liam are the only ones who looks just as confused as Derek feels.

“What?” Derek asks apprehensively.

“Nothing,” Lydia says quickly, giving a look to Kira. Derek remains unconvinced.

“Why didn’t he ask me?” Scott asks Isaac, looking heartbroken.

“Because you never ask to visit him? You just show up?” Isaac suggests.

“Oh,” says Scott, nodding slowly. “Oh, yeah.”

“What haven’t you told us about that trip, Derek?” Lydia questions, her lips set in a sly smile. Derek frowns back in confusion as everyone looks to her and then to him again, eyes wide and some with an expression Derek doesn’t quite understand.

“What?” Derek says, completely baffled. “Nothing. What are you—Is there something going on that I don’t want to be a part of?”

But Lydia just shakes her head. “Seven it is,” she says, and behind her Scott gives him a pleased grin.

\---

Derek realizes he may have misunderstood the situation, because when he shows up on Stiles’ doorstep, there aren’t any other cars in the driveway besides the Jeep and Sheriff’s car, and only the Sheriff is there when the door is opened. He can’t hear anything but some rustling upstairs, either, which is unusual if the house was supposedly filled with a werewolf pack or two.

“Uh,” Derek says eloquently, checking his watch. It reads 7:04. “Am I early?”

“Nope,” Noah responds and steps aside to let him in. “Stiles is upstairs. You hungry? I ordered pizza.”

Derek wasn’t, but he didn’t say so, because Noah had already absconded to the kitchen and left Derek in the entryway without waiting for an answer to his question. With a frown that feels permanently adhered to his face (which, honestly, not an unusual thing when it came to him), Derek ascends the staircase.

“Did you know your dad’s ordering pizza?” Derek asks Stiles when he reaches the room. Stiles is sitting on his bed ( _Alone … what?_ Derek’s brain supplies) cross-legged and looking over some printed-out sheets of paper that are spread in front of him. Stiles’ head snaps up, and Derek immediately notices that one of his Band-Aids is peeling from his jaw.

“ _What_?!” Stiles exclaims, then stiffly starts to get off the bed. Derek can see his teeth clenching from where he stands in the doorway, but Stiles seems more intent on yelling at his dad than caring that he couldn’t move right. Knowing how Stiles felt about Derek helping him, Derek doesn’t bother to try. “He better have gotten one without all the toppings!”

Derek moves to the side as Stiles shuffles by him in a huff, and Derek hears him yelling “Dad! Do I even _want_ to know what you ate while I was gone?” down the stairs as he descends them, and Derek can _hear_ the busted expression on the Sheriff’s face.

Whoops. Maybe Derek shouldn’t have ratted him out.

While Stiles is gone, Derek takes it upon himself to look around the room he hadn’t entered in … two years?

Less than? More? It had been a while, Derek knew that much. He’d been a very different person then.

Stiles’ room hasn’t changed much at all—there are still books and a desk and some odd decal on the wall that was very far from what Derek would have thought Stiles would be interested in, but there are aspects that showed Stiles changing as a person. His bed was in a different place; there were random pieces of yarn in one corner of the floor and a complicated map of pictures and string on a corkboard on the wall; and there were books about werewolves and supernatural entities shoved in with books like _Percy Jackson_ and _The Kite Runner_ on the bookshelf. On the desk, next to his closed laptop, sat a few fat envelopes with insignias that looked suspiciously like college emblems.

Derek hadn’t even known Stiles wanted to go to college, though the idea of him _not_ wanting to go sounds stupid now that he actually thinks about it. His brain wonders what kind of degree Stiles would even want up while his eyes center on the cluster of orange bottles on Stiles’ nightstand. Then, his mind focuses on wondering what they’d administered Stiles. He hadn’t even asked what the formal diagnosis was.

Derek hears Stiles coming back, but he doesn’t look until he hears the shuffled footfalls stop. “Couple of bruised ribs and a minor upper respiratory infection, hairline fracture somewhere on my face,” Stiles says from the entryway. “The did a lot of screening, but there could be shit wrong with me they didn’t catch. I had too much magic interfering for them to get everything they wanted to do done. I couldn’t get it to stop, either. I have to go back if I don’t feel better.” Derek looks at him in alarm. Did he just read Derek’s mind?

Stiles looks sheepish at Derek’s expression. “You’re looking at my meds. There’s my Adderall, but the new shit is an antibiotic, painkiller, and …” Stiles pauses and frowns. “Oh, and something to get me to sleep. Which, wow, gives me the weirdest fucking dreams. Have I ever told you you’d look great in pink? Because you would. Specifically, a baby pink with a gradient of sparkles. And a floor-length hem. Sweet-tart neckline. Or something.” Stiles’ hands fly up as if warding Derek off, and Derek can only guess at what his expression must be like. “Don’t ask me what any of that means, that’s just what the sales lady told me when you walked out. I don’t know what candy has to do with a neckline either, but I bet a candy necklace would be a great addition. Congrats, by the way. Maid of Honor is an _honor_.”

Derek’s pretty sure his face is frozen. He has no idea what to say, but he feels a mild want to punch Stiles in the face. He smothers that, if only for the sake of Stiles’ current situation. Stiles takes the moment to shuffle back to the bed and gingerly sit down on the edge.

“Did I break you?” Stiles says once he’s settled and Derek has yet to say anything.

“What the hell goes on in your head, Stiles?” Derek asks.

Stiles smirks. “You really don’t want to know.”

With a sigh, Derek shakes his head and moves closer to the bed, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. “No, I really don’t,” he agrees, then glances at the door. “Where the hell is Scott? Why is everyone suddenly running late?”

“I told them I changed it to seven-thirty,” Stiles admits sheepishly, which gets Derek back to frowning.

“Why?”

“I wanted to show you something, and I can’t do it if everyone’s watching. They wouldn’t like it.”

Derek’s eyebrows fly up and he blinks rapidly. What?

“What?” he echoes.

“Can you turn the lights out?”

Completely confused, Derek turns and reaches out to flip the lamp off. His eyes adjust rapidly to the dark. When he turns back, Stiles is holding his hand out to him. Derek only has a moment to wonder if Stiles wants him to take it before blue sparks erupt from two of Stiles’ fingertips, charging the air between them and sending off the sharp smell of ozone. Another source of light catches Derek’s attention from the corner of his vision and he looks up to see Stiles staring at him with glowing irises.

If Derek had been a man of expression, he might have done more than inhale sharply.

“What the hell did they do to you?” Derek hears himself ask after a moment of stunned silence. Stiles watches him without saying anything, the sparks curling around his fingers.

“Dunno,” he finally says, and the sparks disappear, taking the light of Stiles’ irises with them. Darkness floods the room again, but Derek can still see Stiles pretty clearly. That doesn’t seem to be the case for Stiles, though, because he stares at some indistinct point in the distance. “I’m not special like everyone else. I’m not a werewolf or a magic fox thing. Or a banshee, or anything like that. I’m just a human. But they decided to do things to me anyway.”

Derek can feel the rage building up inside him; once something he relied on in order to anchor himself away from the monster he could become, now something he needed to reign in before he went and ripped a few throats out.

“Maybe it was because I was human, I don’t know,” Stiles continues. “They knew I’d been acting weird in New York. One of them said something about me channeling it away from you, when she was bringing me food. I don’t know jack about magic, but I think—” Stiles hesitates, and Derek doesn’t do anything but wait. “I think being possessed might have opened something up, like a frequency, and if they were trying to attack you in New York, I was the reason it didn’t work.”

Derek’s frown deepens at Stiles’ words, realization niggling at the back of his mind. “They caught me in a net,” he says. Stiles looks at Derek in surprise, but his eyes aren’t on Derek’s face, which makes him think Stiles still couldn’t really see him. “The net didn’t need any magic. Maybe they did that because of you.”

Derek turns on the light again and Stiles flinches and squints. “Sorry,” Derek amends, but Stiles only rolls his eyes.

“Okay, I know you’re turning to mush, but you’d better not be being nice to me because of what happened. I still prefer you as the mild douche-friend I’m accustomed to. If you’re too nice to me, I’ll have to be the douche-friend, and that’s an enormous crown to wear. I don’t think my head is big enough.”

Derek grumbles an incoherent sentence, which makes Stiles flash a smile. “Better,” he says. “Now, net.” Stiles presses his thumb to his chin, making an exaggerated face of thought. “If I’m some sort of magnet for magic and they had to resort to mundane mechanics in order to get you, then why did they kidnap me again? They didn’t ask for ransom, did they?”

“No,” Derek says in surprise. That hadn’t occurred to him. Why hadn’t they asked for the medallion? Why hadn’t they asked for _anything_?

“So maybe they needed me for something after finding out I was fucking up their attacks. They used a shitload of spells on me, never did figure out why. Or maybe they told me, I usually was too busy showing my lunch from that day the room decoration to know what else was going on at the time.” Derek can feel the blood draining from his face as his mind paints a picture for him. And Eliza had been a part of this? Why? _How_? “That’s why I can do the sparky thing now. Like the guy that took us.”

“Like the whole clan.”

“Uh,” Stiles says, then nods. “Yeah, the girl who sparked me was also … er, sparky. They all use the same magic? There are _different_ types of magic? I thought that was only a thing in, like, WoW.”

Derek’s lips twist into a grimace. “I don’t know a whole lot, but I’m pretty sure clans are based on similar magic so they can empower one another. Or something like that. It would probably be a good idea to ask Deaton about it, he knows that area of information.”

“Yeah,” says Stiles, and then he gives Derek a grin. “You know what this means.”

No, Derek doesn’t. Stiles knows he doesn’t, because after a moment, he answers, “Study session at the library!”

Derek blinks. Twice. “What?”

“Well, not at the library. Unlike you, I’m not a _criminal_ , and my record is clean. I can take the books we’ll need out.”

Derek squints at him, “Have you even ever been in the library? Do you actually have a library card?”

“Uh, excuse me!” Stiles exclaims, mocking offense, then points to his bookshelves. “I read books! I’ve been in the library _and_ I own a card!”

“You own those books,” Derek points out. “That doesn’t prove you have ever been in or used the library. Also? Those are children’s books. They don’t prove anything.”

“Oh my god.” Stiles rolls his eyes dramatically, only wincing a little in pain when he clearly overdoes it. “Just take my word, dude. We’ll be fine.”

Derek has more to say, but he stops himself when he hears an engine rumbling in the driveway and instead lets Stiles know that Scott has arrived.

“Scott’s here!” Noah yells before Stiles has a chance to react, and a pounding sound up the stairs alerts them that Scott is closing in fast. When he enters the room, he’s got a pizza box in one hand and a trademarked-Scott grin on his face. “Meat Lover’s!” says Scott excitedly, which makes Stiles groan and roll his eyes. Scott huffs a laugh in response and sets the pizza on the foot of the bed, dropping his backpack and helmet along the way, then leans down to give Stiles a hug. Derek scoots out of the way before Scott can step on him.

“Man, you still smell weird,” Scott says as he’s pulling away. “Kinda smells like Kira when she’s going full power.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Stiles says wryly. “Give me a slice of that so I don’t have to move my delicate ass.”

“Hey, I spent a good portion of my life looking for you, and it wasn’t to be your servant.”

“I love you, too,” Stiles coos, his hand stretched out for pizza. Scott’s already getting him a piece, despite his protests.

“Lydia’s here!” Noah calls again, and, before Derek knows it, there are seven teenagers in a room that really isn’t suited for that many people, along with himself, and more pizza boxes than Derek had cared to count, all from different places. When word had gotten out that pizza was to be had, but there was a first-come-first-serve basis with Scott already in the house, they started to show up with their own pizza, and the room smelled like a greasy joint you’d find in a hole in the wall. It didn’t seem to bother any of them, and every single slice of pizza was consumed.

 _Teenagers_ , Derek thinks in mild horror after witnessing it in person.

Now that they’ve eaten and conversed about things Derek didn’t quite understand (Isaac had asked about school, and everyone had something to say in regards to it), they’re spread out everywhere: Stiles and Malia and Lydia on Stiles’ bed; Scott, Kira, Isaac and Liam on the floor; which left Derek the desk chair, which he gladly sat in while he watched them interact.

A few times they try to get Derek’s input on things, but once it becomes clear he either doesn’t know what it is they’re talking about or _really_ doesn’t want to be a part of the particular subject (They’re all legal, right? Is Liam? Liam doesn’t look legal.), they stop and instead throw him looks when the conversation curbs into dangerous territories. Derek tries his best to remind himself they only do it to tick him off and to not give them the satisfaction of it working. He doesn’t always manage.

Eventually, because it’s a school night, they all start to trickle out, but only after Lydia comments about how they have things to worry about with final testing coming up, unlike her (she apparently is going to start college two years ahead at MIT as it is—Derek didn’t even know that was possible), and after Scott’s mom calls him and tells him to get home. He hadn’t stayed at Derek’s since Stiles return. Though Derek had wanted to be the first one out, something about the way Stiles glances at him each time he starts to stand up from his seat keeps him from doing so, and he ends up being one of the last people still at the house when Noah comes in.

“Heading out to work,” he says from the entryway just as Isaac is slipping out. He’s got an eyebrow raised at Derek’s presence, but he doesn’t seem to want to think about the fact the oldest werewolf is still in his son’s room from the expression that accompanies it. “You gonna be alright here tonight?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” Stiles says, but his attempt at “annoyed teenager” doesn’t quite manifest solidly. It’s clear he’s aware his father has a legitimate reason for worrying. “I’ve got everyone on speed-dial if I’m not, and _someone_ is bound to pick up if I need them.”

“I better still be number one,” says Noah, giving Stiles a look. “Love you.”

“Love you, too, Dad,” Stiles replies without embarrassment. Another thing Derek hadn’t known was possible, not at his age. Then again, the last time he’d told his parents he loved them they’d been alive, and he’d only been sixteen.

“I should go, too,” Derek says once Noah is gone.

“Actually,” Stiles starts just as Derek’s standing up. Derek looks at him with both eyebrows raised. “I was wondering if you could stay. Just tonight?”

“Why? We put wards up on the house before we found you. They’ll hold through the night. You’re safe.”

Stiles goes quiet—which is completely unlike him. Derek watches him closely, but there’s no signs of the Stiles from the dirt room, so the silence is all human.

“It’s not because of them, is it,” Derek says after a moment.

“Remember how I said I don’t sleep well?” says Stiles, and Derek winces. “I’m going to take the drugs, but I haven’t slept alone since … I don’t really like to sleep alone right now. At least until the drugs knock me out? Please?”

If Derek had used his brain, he wouldn’t have needed Stiles to explain, and he feels guilty for not doing that in the first place.

“Yeah,” Derek says, shedding his leather jacket. “I don’t have anywhere to be.”

The tension in Stiles’ entire body eases visibly, making Derek feel that much worse. Just because Stiles was safe now didn’t mean Derek could revert back to being aloof. He was still needed.

Isn’t that what he wanted?

Stiles goes to brush his teeth and take his medicine, and Derek settles on the floor next to the foot of the bed while he’s gone. “You don’t have to stay on the floor,” Stiles tells him when he returns.

“I feel better here.”

“Suit yourself,” says Stiles with a shrug, and then he climbs back into bed and gets comfortable, flipping off the lights as he goes. “God,” he says almost as soon as the room floods with darkness. “I am so not looking forward to playing catch-up with school. I got jack shit done in the hospital, it’s hell season on Stiles’ ass starting tomorrow.”

Derek huffs a laugh. “Scott would have been in the same boat as you if it weren’t for Lydia.”

“God fucking bless Lydia, we’d all be ruined without her.”

“A junior at MIT before she even graduates, though? I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Dude,” Stiles says, and Derek feels a nudge at the back of his head that has to be Stiles’ foot. Derek looks and, sure enough, Stiles is half-hanging off the bed, looking at Derek with eyes that don’t see detail in the dark. “Right? I feel like I’m lucky I got in at all compared to her.”

“I saw the envelopes,” Derek replies, scooting to the side and away from Stiles’ probing foot. “How many were acceptances?”

“Two,” Stiles says. Derek can’t tell if it’s proudly or sheepishly.

“Congratulations. I didn’t know you guys applied yet. Which are you going to?”

Derek doesn’t think his question is odd or unwarranted considering it fit the topic, plus it wasn’t a weird question normally anyway, but Stiles clams up suddenly. Derek looks at him, and he’s got a pinched look to his face.

“George Washington University,” Stiles finally says, but he doesn’t lose the look. Derek doesn’t understand why, that was a good college in Washington D.C. Sure, it was on the other side of the country, but it was still a good choice.

“Wow,” says Derek shortly, honestly impressed. “Good decision.”

“Yeah. I’ll have to haul ass to get everything made up, they wouldn’t be happy if I showed up with a scrapped GPA thanks to this.”

“Well, I’m staying a while longer, and I can try to help you,” Derek offers. He crosses his arms behind his head and sighs. “Assuming Lydia isn’t taking the reins there. She probably should.”

“Dude, you’re the one who went to college,” Stiles says, shifting around on the mattress again. “Lydia might be a genius and starting off almost done, but we’re both still in high school. This is all on you. I want you both helping me. At the same time.”

Derek frowns. “I didn’t go to college.”

“What?” says Stiles, clearly surprised by this information.

“Why do you think I went to college? The most I did was graduate high school. I never even applied anywhere.”

Stiles looks dumbstruck, the pillow he had crammed behind his head slowly slipping off the bed as he freezes in his surprise. He doesn’t seem to notice when it falls to the floor. “What the hell were you doing in New York after the fire, then?”

“Going to high school?” Derek answers, like it should have been obvious. Because it should have, the fire happened when he was sixteen. You don’t graduate from high school at sixteen. Well—most people didn’t. “I thought about going to college, but I kept telling myself I had time and could do it later. And then I had to come and look for Laura, and that became priority.”

And then with her death, when he hadn’t become Alpha, he needed to know why.

“Why did I think you went to college?” Stiles asks, though it’s clearly at himself rather than at Derek. Derek picks up the pillow and tries to hand it back, then reaches for Stiles’ hand and puts it on the pillow when he doesn’t notice the gesture. Stiles starts, but it’s a far smaller startle than the last time Derek had surprised him by touching him when he couldn’t see it.

“Wishful thinking,” Derek supplies.

There’s lots of rustling noises as Stiles replaces the pillow and continues to find a new position to sleep in, keeping careful of his injuries. Derek rests quietly against the bed while he waits, the sounds relaxing him. Stiles moved around a lot, even when he was sleeping.

“Do you still want to go to college?” Stiles asks softly after he’s finished. Derek leans his head back and stares at the ceiling, thinking about his answer.

He does, because it would be nice to have that under his belt, even if he was already twenty-four. But he also doesn’t, because he’s still not sure what it is he’s doing. He didn’t have a pack, and he didn’t know what he was doing even with his current living situation. His life was a never-ending mess of questions, but he was pretty sure that was the case for most people. Derek wasn’t sure if college was the right thing to add into the mix. But …

“Yeah,” Derek answers honestly.

“What degree would you even go for? I don’t think they teach ‘Manhandling’ or ‘Pack-forming’ at any college. I hear they have plenty of team-building exercises, though, which you totally need in your life.”

Derek glowers in Stiles’ direction. He must be able to tell, because he smirks back.

“Something in English maybe,” Derek says, completely ignoring Stiles’ smile and jab. “Or Literature. I’ve always liked books.”

“You’d make a good English professor,” Stiles admits quietly after a beat of silence. “You’d end up with all-female classes though.”

Derek frowns. “Why? Women make up the majority of that area, sure, but I would be proof enough that it’s not all-female.”

Stiles snorts, but he doesn’t answer. Finally, Derek has to allow himself to say, “All right, maybe I would,” because he does understand where Stiles is coming from with the comment. He thinks he should probably take it as a compliment.

Derek feels the soft jab of Stiles’ covered foot return. “If it’s what you want, you should do it.”

Derek moves his head again. The foot follows. “I have time to decide.”

“Don’t let your mind think up obligations for you just because you’re not sure. You’ve been here a long damn time taking care of things, Derek. You need to do what _you_ want to do.”

Derek blinks, surprised at what Stiles is telling him. He wants to argue it, or say something less-than-compliant at Stiles for his assumptions, but he can’t. Because Stiles is not wrong. Derek kind of hates it.

“All right,” he says quietly, almost so quiet he thinks Stiles might not have been able to hear it. “What are you majoring in?” asks Derek so he can change the subject away from himself.

But Stiles doesn’t answer. Instead of looking at him, Derek gives himself a moment to listen, and Stiles’ breathing pattern tells him he’s fallen asleep already.

Though this was where his promise became fulfilled, Derek doesn’t stand up from the floor and leave. He stays, listening to Stiles’ breathing, and allows Stiles’ words to bounce around in his head.

\---

It’s a good thing he didn’t leave, Derek thinks, because about an hour into Stiles’ slumber, he starts to thrash.

Derek’s flipping through the copy of _Percy Jackson_ ( _The Last Olympian_ —he didn’t get what was going on, he’d never read the whole series) he’d seen on the shelf when he hears the sound of flesh smacking roughly against the mattress. His head snaps up in momentary alarm, but he hadn’t bothered to actually _look_ at Stiles, because he assumed it was just a sleep-reflex of some sort. But then the sound comes again, and Derek puts the book down and turns to see what is going on.

It’s not a nightmare kind of thrashing—the kind you see in movies when a character is seeing something bad and becomes a danger to both himself and to anyone trying to wake him up. It’s smaller, more contained movements, like each spasm is for a specific reason. It’s somehow worse, and when Derek realizes, he jumps to his feet, expecting Stiles to wake up with a scream at any moment.

But he doesn’t. He just keeps twisting himself up in his sheets, a pained expression contorting his face.

“Stiles?” Derek hisses. “ _Stiles_.”

Does he reach out and touch him? Does he wait?

Was it a good idea to wake him up in the first place?

Derek doesn’t know, and his brain isn’t allowing him to think with his growing alarm. He reaches out and grabs Stiles by the shoulder, and the scream comes just as he rips his eyes open and throws himself into a sitting position, nearly knocking Derek in the skull as he goes. Derek backs up long enough for Stiles to decide on a sitting position and then he pushes back in, one hand still on Stiles’ shoulder and the other moving to press against Stiles’ chest. Derek can feel Stiles’ heart hammering like a jackrabbit beneath his shirt.

Stiles is instantly aware of his surroundings, and he looks at Derek with glowing eyes. Something like fear shoots through Derek’s chest when their eyes lock, because that’s _not_ Stiles looking back at him.

But then it is. It’s Stiles, bewildered and blinking and clutching the sheets with bloodless knuckles. Derek blinks, shakes his head. The light is gone when he focuses again.

What the hell?

“That’s new,” Stiles chokes out, swallowing thickly even as he continues to pull in rough breaths. His hand reaches up to wrap around Derek’s wrist. Suddenly, sparks erupt in winding ropes along his arms, and Derek is thrown from the bed from the force of the energy within them. He lands heavily on his back, his head knocking against the floor with a hollow thump. “ _Derek_!” Stiles yells, and the fact Derek hears it tells him the fall didn’t knock him out.

Derek sits up slowly, one hand cradling his head where he’d knocked it. The magic is still crackling along Stiles’ arms, and Stiles is looking down at himself in horror. His eyes are glowing again. _“What the fuck is going on?!”_

“Calm down,” Derek grits out through clenched teeth. He squeezes his eyes shut for just a second. “It’s alright, Stiles. You need to calm down. _Now_.”

Stiles works his mouth for a moment, but he understands, and his eyes snap shut as he forces his breathing into measures.  The sparks slowly start to recede and vanish, and then, all at once, they’re gone. When Stiles opens his eyes again, there are dark rings smudged around them. Those hadn’t been there before.

“I don’t know what happened,” Stiles says, shaken. Derek gets to his feet and returns to the side of the bed, settling his weight deep in the mattress as close to Stiles as Stiles’ unconscious reaction to pull away allows him. “I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know how … I don’t know.”

“I think you should stay with me,” Derek finally says breathlessly, his eyes searching Stiles’ body for any signs it was going to happen again. “At my place. Just for now. Just at night.” Just in case Stiles starts screaming in his sleep and his dad comes in to see what’s wrong and ends up getting hurt from the magic Stiles can’t control. Or worse.

Stiles looks at him, his chest hiccupping and his shirt blotted with a cold sweat, and nods.

“Yeah,” he chokes. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've bumped up the rating to Mature and added warnings for graphic violence. They don't happen in this chapter, and won't happen for a while (I think), but it would be best to expect them at some point from now on.

Derek knew he was to blame for most, if not all, of the ridiculous situations he got himself into. Sometimes they were caused by outside parties looking to wreak havoc on his world, but most of the time it was good and truly just Derek’s own damn fault he was in whichever predicament that he was prone to cursing out at any given moment. Case-in-point: the situation he was busy living through right now, along with a beat of others that had preceded it.

When he had left Stiles’ room that morning, it was only after Stiles had managed to doze off a handful of times, and—because Derek had stayed the whole night, even though the bouts of sleep had only lasted between a few minutes and slightly over an hour each time, and had each ended with Stiles only startling awake without any magical interference to speak of—only after Derek had heard the Sheriff’s car coming up the driveway and Stiles had shooed him from the room, neither of them really wanting to explain to Stiles’ dad just _why_ Derek was still in Stiles’ room before daybreak had happened. He would probably put two and two together (then either come to the wrong conclusion or the right one, neither of which were bound to be any good for all party members) and no one needed that right now, Noah himself least of all.

Because he had stayed the whole night, Derek had not gotten a wink of sleep. Also because he had stayed the whole night, Stiles’ room apparently reeked of him, which was something Derek had not thought about. At all. If he had, he might have bothered to let Scott know ahead of time instead of letting him find out for himself, because Scott did not have the makings of a detective, and his conclusions were usually less than flattering. And also usually badly-timed when it came to Derek, specifically.

Apparently, he had stopped by Stiles’ house before school, and promptly, in his Scott way, freaked out.

Derek gets a text just as he’s trying to lie his head down on his pillow for what will be the last time in a while once Stiles shows up to stay, followed by another text, and then three more. He debates silencing his phone and ignoring whatever’s filtering in, but he knows he can’t do that with a killer witch clan out there. So, instead, he picks up his phone and immediately regrets (not for the first time) the fact Peter had bitten _Scott_ , of all the choices he could have had to bite instead.

 _Why does Stiles smell like you?_ the first text reads, only with far less grammatical elegance.

_Dude, this whole room smells like you._

_Oh my god, the bed smells like you!_

_Derek what the hell were you doing here after everyone left?_

_Stiles says you were keeping watch. Bullshit._

Before Derek has the chance to read the last two of the five, another text comes in, but, once Derek reaches it, he can’t figure out what it says.

_Pls dn tll u dnt do it Y Awful DEREK_

He frowns, rereading the text three times, but absolutely nothing comes from his attempt at deciphering it beyond the obvious terms. He decides that’s for the best and starts a reply.

_I don’t know what you’re saying. Stiles did ask me to keep watch. I know the scent, and everyone else had school in the morning. Leave him alone. Let me sleep._

It’s the best fabrication of the semi-truth Derek can come up with at the moment, and he deems it good enough in his exhaustion. He’s out the moment his head hits the pillow and his phone doesn’t buzz again until much later in the day. When it finally does, five hours have passed, and the text is from Stiles, informing him that he’d be there in a few minutes. Derek doesn’t bother hustling to look decent—Stiles has definitely seen him worse—and waits at the door for Stiles to pull up.

“Dad wasn’t thrilled,” Stiles says when he shows up at Derek’s doorstep, the Jeep parked haphazardly in Derek’s little parking lot. Derek frowns at it, and then Stiles, from his position at the front door. Should Stiles be driving yet? Was the medication he’s on something that required someone else to drive him around when needed? Derek wasn’t actually sure.

Not that it really mattered, Derek rationalized. That wouldn’t have stopped him anyway. Never mind.

Stiles pushes past Derek while he’s busy thinking and throws his stuffed backpack onto the couch with a wince, then looks around the room and nods his head. “Not bad. How did you manage living with Scott _and_ Lydia in a place this small, though?”

Derek, still standing by the open door in disgruntlement, makes a face. “With difficulty. It was really cramped when Malia and Kira were also around.”

“Well, I’ll only be here at night, at least. I start school again tomorrow.”

Derek shuts the door, finally, and goes to loom over the couch, which allows him to eye up Stiles’ bag. “And your dad actually allowed this, right? You only said he wasn’t thrilled, not that he said you could do this.”

“Eighteen, Derek,” Stiles says. He walks into the kitchen and turns his head this way and that as he goes, looking around in that nosy way he always did. “Technically, I’m my own man. He knew something was up though. He agreed, but he wants me home during the day when he doesn’t work and I’m not at school.”

“You _were_ gone for over a month. I think he’s allowed to make conditions.”

Stiles doesn’t reply. He’s banging through some of the cabinets, and Derek watches him from across the counters. “What are you looking for?”

“Just taking inventory.”

“Because?”

“Because I don’t trust any of those bitches not to hunt me down and come after me. Knowing where everything is makes it easier to locate a weapon.”

Derek frowns. “You’re not going to find anything useful in those,” he says, pointing at the cupboard Stiles currently has open, which only holds a few mugs and glasses. “The knives are on the counter over there.”

Stiles turns to where Derek points. “My bat is in my Jeep,” he says after some scrutiny. “I’ll get that.”

“Do you really think you’ll need it?”

“No,” Stiles admits as he walks out of the kitchen and back to the doorway, “but so far I’ve been wrong twice. With my running luck, third time won’t be the charm.”

\---

With the knowledge of Stiles living nights at Derek’s spreading throughout the group, Scott decides he wants to resume staying, too. And with Scott comes Isaac, much to Derek’s general displeasure.

“ _Why_ are you two here?” Derek asks, exasperated and annoyed at the two werewolves that were sitting at the small coffee table in Derek’s flat. They were currently flipping through the piles of notes and homework Stiles had to finish before final grades were accounted for, while Stiles sat next to them and gave the papers a look of general disgust. Two bags have joined Stiles’ on the couch—one Derek had seen before, the last time Scott had decided to live with him, and another that had to be Isaac’s. “Don’t tell me it’s to help him with his work. I highly doubt either of you are going to be any help.”

“Wow, you sound like my mom,” Scott says. Stiles snickers.

“We’re Stiles’ bodyguards,” Isaac explains. Derek momentarily debates just calling in Chris for help, but that would be like surrendering. “Well. Most of the time. I’m not allowed on school grounds since I don’t go there anymore, but otherwise I’m a bodyguard.” Isaac shakes his head, looking at Derek in mild wonder. “I don’t know how you got away with that creeper stalking-lurking thing you did all the time, but I can’t do it. They keep catching me and kicking me out. Sheriff Stilinski yelled at me once already.”

Stiles outright laughs, and Derek gives Isaac a dark look, which still makes him cower just a little. Derek enjoys that.

“That doesn’t explain why you brought your stuff here,” Derek says with a huff. Scott, once finished looking through the topmost layer of work, gets to his feet and strolls into the kitchen like he owns it. Derek watches him pass. “I don’t remember becoming the owner of a motel,” he growls.

“It’s just for a little while, while we try to keep Stiles safe and everything,” Scott says. He’s got a bag of microwave popcorn in his hand. Derek doesn’t remember buying that. “You didn’t have a problem with it before.”

“ _Before_ we needed to be close by so communication was instant. Stiles is here now, and he’s safe while I’m around. I’m not going to be leaving him at the house _alone_ in the _middle of the night_ ,” Derek says forcefully when Scott gives him a doubtful look. “He’s staying in the bedroom, the farthest place from the easiest way into here.”

“I am?” Stiles says in surprise at the same time Isaac is saying, “He is?”

Scott nearly overlaps them both when he says, “With you?”

Isaac and Stiles look at Scott like they hadn’t considered that, and then all three of them are looking at Derek with varying expressions, all of which make him feel uncomfortable.

“ _No_ ,” Derek says firmly. “I’ll be on the couch, by the door.”

“But that’s where I sleep,” Scott says over the sound of the microwave working. “You slept on the floor last time.”

“Wait, where am I going to sleep?” asks Isaac.

“Is the bed not big enough for three people?” Stiles asks Scott, who shrugs.

“I think it is, Lydia and Malia and Kira slept in it together, like, once. But they’re girls, so they probably cuddled and were able to fit like that.”

“I’m not cuddling either of you,” Isaac declares, leaning away from Stiles. “I’d rather sleep on the floor.”

Stiles presses a hand to his chest, his mouth open in an expression of mock hurt. “I take offense to that rejection.”

Derek closes his eyes and takes a breath through his nose. _Why_ was this happening? “You’re not staying, either of you,” he asserts, cutting the three off in their argument. They all look at him, and each has an eyebrow cocked in a way that Derek knows is bad news for him.

Jesus. It was pack days with Erica, Boyd, and Isaac all over again.

And he was supposed to be the adult here, even if he wasn’t the alpha. Someone really needed to get that through the three thick skulls he was currently in the presence of.

“Stiles gets the bed,” Derek starts slowly, firmly, and Stiles’ face lights up as the first one to catch on that they’ve won their battle, “and I’m on the couch. Scott, you and Isaac are going on the floor, and that is _non-negotiable_.”

Scott and Isaac share a pout, but they must realize Derek’s not going to argue any of it further, because they accept their fate with little more than grumbles. Scott takes the popcorn out of the microwave, and the three of them turn back to the homework, leaving Derek in peace.

Or, well, as much peace as you can have with Isaac, Scott, and Stiles in the same room as you. Unfortunately for Derek, what he does get doesn’t last long, because just as he’s digging around the kitchen looking for something to make for dinner, his front door opens, and Lydia’s standing at the entrance with a key poised in her fingers.

A key that Derek definitely did not give her.

“I heard you needed a genius,” she says smoothly, shutting the door behind her and waltzing to the table with an air of knowledge grace. She shoots Derek a look that’s all raised eyebrows of challenge to defy her before settling at the table between Isaac and Stiles, and Derek can’t do anything but grimace, like he knew she knew he would, because she was _actually_ a necessity if Stiles wanted to get all of his work done on time, unlike the other two teens at the table.

 _At least she’s tolerable_ , Derek thinks, clicking the oven on with a huff. _Mostly._

\---

Lydia, surprise, stays the night when the homework session pushes well on into the late hours. She’s relinquished to the bed with Stiles once it’s obvious Scott and Isaac are down for the count—the former with his face pressed into the edge of the table and the latter with his head nestled in the dregs of the popcorn bowl—and Derek takes to the couch as soon as he knows they’re good for the night.

He doesn’t remember falling sleep, but the sound of the shower going rouses Derek from his light slumber. After a moment of confusion, he gets up, steps around the sprawled forms of Isaac and Scott on the floor, and checks the bedroom. The sleeping figure of Lydia curled up in his bed tells Derek it’s Stiles in the shower, so he meanders back to the living room and flops back into the couch with a sigh. Scott and Isaac don’t even rouse slightly.

Derek lies there, allowing the sound of the water running to patter around his thoughts, and the rhythm eventually lulls him back into the semblance of sleep. Deep enough so that when he rouses again, the water has stopped, and the strong smell of coffee is filling his nostrils. Derek pulls himself from his couch again and goes to investigate.

Stiles is sitting on the counter when Derek stands and can see into the kitchen, a blue cup in his hands and a blanket around his shoulders, his hair damp and dripping dark spots into the fabric. He’s wearing Scott’s shirt, the one with the gray and blue stripes, and it washes him out. Makes him look too skinny, too underfed.

Too hollow.

He doesn’t look up from his mug when Derek comes in, but Derek can tell he knows he’s there.

“Hey,” Derek greets him softly, aware of Scott and Isaac sleeping haphazardly in a pile of blankets and pillows and popcorn on the floor just beyond the bar counters. Derek can still see them if he just cranes his neck enough. If they had woken up at any point, like Derek had, it wasn’t obvious from the way they slept, half-tangled in the blankets and each other, more solidly asleep than Derek could will himself to be in the moment. Or, really, at any moment. Derek almost envies them.

“Can’t sleep,” Stiles says by way of explanation, bringing Derek’s attention back onto him. He taps a nail against the mug. “Made some coffee.”

“You didn’t take your medicine?”

Stiles shrugs. “Not tonight.”

Derek frowns, glancing back at the room, and then realizes: Lydia is here. If a deep sleep meant potential nightmares for Stiles, it also meant there was a chance he could hurt her with the magic.

“The magic never happened in the hospital?”

Stiles shakes his head. “I didn’t have any nightmares in there. I don’t know why I’m having them now.”

“Maybe—” Derek hesitates over the tentative topic despite himself. God, he _was_ going soft. Since when did he care about being tactful? “Maybe it has something to do with the clan.”

“Always has something to do with them, doesn’t it,” Stiles mutters into his cup.

Derek decides on the spot that staying up with Stiles was what he wanted to do for the night, despite knowing he’d hate himself in the morning, and pulls a mug for himself from the cupboard, pouring some of the brew in silence and settling his hip against the bar directly across from Stiles once he’s done. He can tell Stiles doesn’t fail to notice the similarity of their positions from the way his expression changes, but he doesn’t know if it brings comfort to Stiles the way it does to him.

It probably doesn’t—the New York house and the experiences it brought them were probably not good ones for Stiles. He likely didn’t want to be reminded.

Derek takes a sip of his coffee, and immediately grimaces.

“I don’t know how to use your coffee maker,” Stiles pipes up just as Derek’s pulling his cup away from his mouth and glaring down at it. Derek glances up to see him smirking. He’s relieved to find it’s a _Stiles_ smirk, and there’s no ill intent behind it. “I thought it’d be easy since it’s super fancy, but I was horrifically wrong.”

“Only you could ruin a cup of coffee this badly,” Derek says, leaning forward to pour the cup out into the sink of the cramped kitchenette.

“It tastes more like tar than it has a right to,” says Stiles, right before he takes a drink of his own. He gags immediately. “I don’t know what I was expecting. That wasn’t my first taste.” He follows Derek’s suit and dumps the contents. Derek takes the cup from him and starts rinsing both mugs of their sludge.

“I’ll fix it,” he promises, setting the cups on the drying rack once they’re clean, then moving to start his coffee maker. Stiles doesn’t move from his perch. Derek goes through the motions that had become comfortingly familiar to him, when everyone was gearing up for night-long searches and others were filing in after coming back with nothing new to report, in want of nothing more than enough caffeine to get them home before they crashed. At least this time there wasn’t a hint of loss and desperation to the action of brewing coffee. Just confusion and comfort, a combination Derek was all too familiar with as it was. This, he could handle.

“Something’s bothering you,” Stiles says suddenly, tapping the heel of his foot against the cabinet below the counter he was sitting on, and it catches Derek so completely off guard that he nearly misses his cup and starts pouring the scalding hot coffee onto his own foot.

Okay, maybe staying up the whole night yet again wasn’t such a good idea. He was sleeping the _entire_ time the kids were at school, he told himself, and that was final. He wasn’t about to spend a whole day re-growing the skin of his foot, for god’s sake.

Derek sets the hot coffee pot back into the brewer and gives Stiles a confused look. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, but I know something’s bothering you. Fess up, before I pull out the big guns and really pester you. Don’t think I can’t.”

“I’m uncomfortably aware that you can and will,” Derek says. Stiles gives him a smile that’s too cocky to be pleasant. “But I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t slept enough?” he tries.

Stiles shakes his head. “No, not that. Something else. You’re acting weird.”

“I am?” Derek’s genuinely confused. He hadn’t been acting any differently than he normally would, as far as he’s aware. It was during the trip that he had actually been acting off, but that was because he couldn’t stop being bitter about what Stiles had said to Scott just before they’d left—which, in the end, had just been a big misunderstanding. Stiles hadn’t noticed up until they had been about to leave a week later, so what could he be talking about now? Was him acting normal weird to Stiles, who seemed to think Derek acting weird was normal?

That whole train of thought just made Derek’s head hurt, so he pushed it to the side.

“No one else has said anything, I don’t think I’m acting different,” says Derek. Stiles huffs in response.

“No, something is wrong. I can tell. I don’t know how, okay,” he says the moment Derek squints at him, “but there has to be something niggling your little wolfy brain lobes, because it’s bothering _me_. I don’t like it.”

Okay … what?

“Something is bothering me, something I can’t think of right now, and it’s bothering you in turn?” Derek asks slowly, completely skeptical.

Stiles’ hands fly up, palms turned towards the ceiling. “I said I don’t know how! Call it more witchy hullabaloo, if you want. It’s not something I was able to do before.”

“No kidding,” Derek mutters, giving Stiles a pointed look.

“Hey,” Stiles asserts, “cut me some slack for the trip. I didn’t know something I would have said would have bothered you so much until I actually realized you gave more of a shit than I’d allowed myself to think. I get now that I was just being a massive dipshit, but I was also going through some things during that trip. _Now_ , I can tell. For whatever reason, I can tell something’s up whether I want to or not.”

Derek frowns. “Does it work with the others?”

“I don’t know. I’ll need to test it or something, I haven’t exactly had a lot of heart-to-hearts with anyone since getting back.” Stiles’ eyes narrow. “Hey. Stop changing the subject.”

Derek sighs loudly in exasperation. “I don’t know what to tell you, Stiles! A lot of things are bothering me, but I don’t know which one you’re picking up on. You were just gone for a month and you came back worse than I wanted you to, and that makes me feel like crap, because it’s my fault you were there in the first place and my fault any of this is happening.”

Derek stops suddenly and has to resist the childish urge to slap a hand across his mouth. He settles for pursing his lips instead and trying to seem like he meant to upchuck all of that in one go.

Well, there it was. Okay.

Stiles stares at him. “Derek, I hate to tell you this, but you have a problem with taking blame for stupid things.”

“Stiles—”

“No,” Stiles stops him, his hand flying up, “wait your turn, it’s my time to talk. You want to go all the way back to the root of the blame? That would be on me. I know I’m not the smartest lightbulb in the toolbox, but I know what the hell I’ve gotten myself into. It’s _my_ fault I’m in this, because I didn’t turn around and run at the first inkling of ‘oh shit this is a death wish’ that came my way. Or any of the other ones—there were plenty! I could have even gone home early if I hadn’t argued with you about staying!” Stiles gestures as he talks, and it’s grating on Derek’s nerves, because now he’s getting pretty upset about this and his brain wanted to watch the movement more than it wanted to listen to what was coming out of Stiles’ mouth.

“I couldn’t _not_ be there for you, Derek,” Stiles insists. It must be clear on Derek’s face how he’s feeling, if Stiles is explaining himself. “That’s not how I work, okay? That’s not how _we_ work. We’re all there for each other, even if we fuck up sometimes and _don’t look at our phones_.” The last part is pointed at either Scott or Isaac, because Stiles makes a point of looking at the space above the bar counters in the direction of where the two were still sleeping soundly.

“You said I wasn’t there,” Derek blurts out before he even really comprehends what it is he’s saying. He doesn’t know where it comes from, and, yeah, sometimes he might have control issues, but this was just getting worse the longer he had his mouth open.

Not talking would be a really good thing for Derek’s ego right about now.

Stiles’ eyes snap back to Derek in surprise, his mouth turned down into a startled frown. “Wasn’t where?” he asks.

Derek doesn’t answer. He just looks at Stiles, and Stiles’ frown deepens at the lack of answer. “Derek?” he prods slowly, in that calm voice people used on children they wanted answers from. “Where weren’t you?”

“When you were the Nogitsune, I guess,” Derek grits out. “When I found you, in … the room, you said I wasn’t there for you when it happened.” Derek turns his gaze away, annoyed with himself at bringing the topic up when it was clear Stiles didn’t remember, if his expression of confusion is any indication. “But I was there. I was there the whole time. You left things for me.”

Stiles blinks rapidly, his mouth slipping open, but he doesn’t say anything. His eyes flick around as his mind works, and his expression only deepens in confusion the longer the silence between them stretches on. “You were there,” Stiles confirms firmly after a long time has passed. “You were definitely there. I don’t—I don’t know why I said that.”

Stiles looks at Derek like he’s looking for forgiveness. Like he’s mortified he did something like that. Derek looks back, then shakes his head. “You weren’t right at the time. I just … wanted to know if you meant something else by saying it, maybe.” He wanted Stiles to know he _had_ been there, but like hell he was going to admit that.

“I don’t even remember saying it,” Stiles whispers. He looks like he’s straining to remember and upset that he can’t. Derek, now feeling very guilty for even bringing it up, reaches out and pats his shoulder.

“Hey. It’s not a big deal.”

Stiles nods his head once, but he doesn’t look convinced.

“I guess that’s what was wrong,” Derek says, picking up the mug that was Stiles’ and handing it to him. He takes it, his eyes still steadily on Derek and his expression unchanging. “I hadn’t been thinking about it until just then, though.”

“Maybe that’s not what I was picking up on, then,” Stiles says, but it’s in a distracted way, and he looks off to the side thoughtfully. Derek decides he doesn’t like this.

“Stiles,” he says, to get Stiles to look at him again.

“It’s not that, Derek.” Stiles takes a deep breath. It fills Derek with trepidation. “I don’t remember saying it. I don’t remember … much of anything. What if I hadn’t said it?”

“You think I imagined it?” Derek asks in confusion. Stiles shakes his head sharply.

“No, what if _I_ didn’t say that?” Stiles jabs a hand against his chest in emphasis. “What if it wasn’t _me_ speaking?”

Oh.

Derek stares at him, knowing what it is he’s suggesting but not wanting to think about it that way. Stiles, either unaware to Derek’s unwillingness or uncaring that it existed in the face of reality, pushes, “What if they’re doing more than just channeling spells through me?”

No. It might not always be Stiles when the magic charges through, and it might not have been fully Stiles in the room that night he was found, but he couldn’t possibly be suggesting—

But he was. And Derek couldn’t do anything to deny the fact that he might be right.

“What if they were trying to figure out to control me?” Stiles whispers. “Derek,” the tremor in Stiles’ tone has Derek staring holes into Stiles’ own eyes, and neither of them can seem to blink. “What if they already did?”

“We’ll figure something out.” Something. Anything. Deaton could think of something. He had to. Stiles’ hand goes to his forehead, then slides down the length of his face. “Stop,” Derek nearly barks, “we’ll figure something out. All we can do right now is wait and keep tracking them.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Stiles mutters from behind his palm. “I don’t want anyone else to get killed because of me.”

And, despite the severe want to insist that no one will, Derek can’t seem to open his mouth and lie to Stiles, because he doesn’t think he can stand to be wrong if someone does die. He doesn’t think Stiles can, either.

“I’ll call Deaton in the morning,” Derek promises.

“Derek—”

“Shut up. There are ways to go around this, we learned a lot when you …” Derek trails off.

“When I was possessed, you can say it,” Stiles says with a wry smile, but it’s an attempt at reassuring Derek where he feels he can’t tread. “At least it was good for something.”

“It shouldn’t have happened,” Derek mutters. Stiles doesn’t answer, choosing instead to bring the still-hot lip of the mug to his mouth and inhale the steam that rose from the surface, his gaze on some point away from where Derek stood. Derek takes his own cup and holds it in front of his mouth, but he doesn’t drink from it. Then, all of a sudden, he realizes something. “You have school in the morning,” Derek says. Stiles looks at him like he’s stating the obvious. Derek reaches out and takes the cup from Stiles, wincing slightly when the hot liquid sloshes over the side and burns his hand. “You shouldn’t be drinking coffee, you should be resting.”

“I can’t sleep without that medicine,” Stiles says.

“Go back to bed anyway.”

“Jeez, Derek, when did you become such a dad?” Stiles complains, but he’s sliding off the counter.

“Since your dad entrusted me with your well-being.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, walking around Derek to leave the kitchen. “You’re a werewolf, dude, what could he possibly do to you?”

“Somehow, I think he’d figure something out if he really wanted to.”

Stiles, despite his earlier insistence, throws Derek a smirk just before he reaches the room, and Derek spends the few hours he has left before everyone leaves for school wondering what the Sheriff might already have that could make Derek wish he’d kept the werewolf information in the dark. He doesn’t like what his brain comes up with, to say the least.


End file.
